Museo Egizio & Galleria Sabauda

Turin's magnificent Egyptian collection is one of the world's largest. This was, in fact, the world's first Egyptian museum, thanks to the fact that the Savoys ardently amassed artifacts through most of their reign, and the museum continued to mount collecting expeditions throughout the early 20th century. Of the 30,000 pieces on display, some of the more captivating exhibits are in the first rooms you enter on the ground floor. These include the Rock Temple of Ellessiya, from the 15th century B.C., which the Egyptian government presented to the museum in gratitude for Italian efforts to save monuments threatened by the Aswan Dam. The two statuary rooms nearby are staggering in the size and drama of the objects they house, most notably two sphinxes and a massive, richly painted statue of Ramses II. Smaller objects -- mummies, funerary objects, and a papyrus Book of the Dead -- fill the galleries on the next floor; the most enchanting exhibit here is the everyday paraphernalia, including eating utensils and shriveled foodstuffs, from the tomb of the 14th-century-B.C. architect Khaie and his wife.

The Savoys' other treasure trove, a magnificent collection of European paintings, fills the salons of the Galleria Sabauda above the Egyptian collection. The Savoys' royal taste ran heavily to painters of the Flemish and Dutch schools, and the works by Van Dyck, van Eyck, Rembrandt, and Van der Weyden, among others, make up one of Italy's largest collections of northern European paintings. In fact, two of Europe's most prized Flemish masterpieces are here, Jan van Eyck's Stigmata of St. Francis and Hans Memling's Passion of Christ. Italian artists, including those from Piedmont, are also well represented; one of the first canvases you see upon entering the galleries is the work of a Tuscan, Fra'Angelico's sublime Virgin and Child.

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