The Galleries of Italy is expanding and opening a new location in Turin. It will be a museum dedicated to photography

After Milan, Vicenza, and Naples, the Gallerie d’Italia is opening a new branch in Turin: the three museums in Piazza Scala, Palazzo Leoni Montanari, and Palazzo Zevallos (which in 2019 were able to welcome more than 500,000 visitors overall, and have 84,000 children and young people participate in their educational activities) will be joined by the new hub of Palazzo Turinetti, a historic building in Piazza San Carlo, the corporate headquarters of Intesa Sanpaolo, the banking institution that owns the Gallerie d’Italia. The works that will transform Palazzo Turinetti into the fourth museum of the Gallerie d’Italia, with a project signed by architect Michele De Lucchi, will start in the coming months and will be completed between 2021 and 2022. The exhibition area will be six thousand square meters, three thousand of which will be reserved for exhibition activities: in the rooms, mainly photographic works will be housed: Palazzo Turinetti will, in fact, be the museum dedicated to photography in the Galleries. There will thus be space for thePublifoto Archive (with 7 million shots between the 1930s and the 1990s), and exhibitions on great photographers.

The Gallerie d’Italia will activate synergies with other important institutions in Turin and beyond, including Camera - Centro Italiano per la fotografia (of which Intesa Sanpaolo is a founding partner), Teatro Regio, Salone del Libro, Torino Film Festival, MITO Settembre Musica, Torino Jazz Festival, Biennale Democrazia, Torinodanza and many others.

Palazzo Turinetti was built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Marquis Giorgio Turinetti di Priero, a court banker and President of Finance of the Duchy of Savoy, and is recognizable by its long portico that provides harmony to the square. Inside, the building (remodeled in the 18th century) features stucco, decorations and fine furnishings. After the restorations that followed the postwar reconstruction, it experienced, in 1951, the establishment of the Istituto San Paolo, which opened its own office there, and since 1963 has housed its management, while today, as mentioned above, it is the headquarters of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group.

“The identity of the new museum headquarters,” reads a note from the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, “will be to form a bridge between the past and the future. For Intesa Sanpaolo, this vocation transcends both traditional philanthropic patronage and the instrument of sponsorship to play a role in promoting values characterized by aspects of originality, professionalism, and responsibility comparable to those demonstrated in the proper banking activity. Within this framework is the opening of the Turin museum with a permanent project of cultural offerings in the heart of a city with which Intesa Sanpaolo has a preferential link entrusted to its historical roots and present activities, starting with the skyscraper on Corso Inghilterra. Since the first presentation of the Culture Project in 2011, President Giovanni Bazoli included Turin among the landmarks of the Gallerie d’Italia, in an ideal Grand Tour linking different Italian cities. The Gallerie d’Italia network is in fact developed in local settings but with a clear national significance. In Italian cities that are headquarters of the Bank, historic buildings have been turned into exhibition and cultural spaces, veritable museums where Intesa Sanpaolo’s art collections can be made available to the public, reflecting the cultural atmospheres, figurative traditions, and taste that have characterized the regions and historical periods of origin of the individual banks merged by merger into Intesa Sanpaolo. The ’banking’ environments are brought to new life by hosting permanent collections, temporary exhibitions, and cultural events. In this perspective, the opening of the photographic archives will be able to tell and explore untold stories of the city and the country.”

The new headquarters of the Gallerie d’Italia will be presented on Jan. 14 by Intesa Sanpaolo chairman emeritus Giovanni Bazoli, chairman Gian Maria Gros-Pietro and Carlo Messina, managing director and ad, in a meeting that will also feature speeches by Chiara Appendino, mayor of Turin, and Alberto Cirio, president of the Piedmont region.

Pictured: Palazzo Turinetti in Turin.

The Galleries of Italy is expanding and opening a new location in Turin. It will be a museum dedicated to photography

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