Museo Nazionale della Montagna "Duca degli Abruzzi" (National Mountain Museum "Duca degli Abruzzi")

The National Mountain Museum "Duca degli Abruzzi" is placed on the hill of Turin, on the side of the church and of the convent of the Monte dei Cappuccini, in a panoramic position from which you can admire a long stretch of the Alps and the city below. The idea to build a museum was born in 1874 among the first partners of the Club Alpino Italiano, which a decade before was born in the same city.

Nowadays the museum works, with a vast and varied activity, both at a national and at an international level. It wants to be a link of cultural unity which ideally unites, under every aspect, the mountains from all over the world. Therefore, following the prearranged aim, to the setting of the permanent museum, some temporary exhibitions are added.

National Mountain Museum

The museum was born with little expectations, but it was its merit to grow and become better and better; the main points can be summarised in a short series of events but in a long period of more than a century.

In 1871 the Fondo per il Culto gave to the Municipality of Turin the premises of the former Convent of the Capuchins of the Mountain of Turin and, more precisely, the building which they used before with the annexed church and all the environs.

Later in 1874 the town council, accepting the proposal of the Club Alpino Italiano, agreed to put on the Monte dei Cappuccini an "alpino" lookout and an observatory, consisting of a simple pavilion with a moving telescope.

On June 26th, 1888, the first room was completed and inaugurated and later it hosted the scientific collections, and in 1901 the prince Luigi di Savoia Duca degli Abruzzi, gave to the section of the Club Alpino, of which he was honorary president, some objects that he owned during the expetition to the North Pole. With the International Exhibition held in Turin in 1911 the Museum's collections were enriched again and in 1918 there was a more precise order of the rooms.

In 1935 the museum was closed due to the building's inadequacy. The transformation's works asked huge architectonical expenses which completely transformed the outside and the inside of the building.

Its complete re-opening was on July 19th, 1942, but World War II deeply damaged the new museum that, although the damage suffered, was partly restructured and opened during the Holydays.

In the 50s there was a re-improvement of the museum, and in 1966 the Turin Club Alpino Italiano decided to demolish and reconstruct the exhibition rooms but only at the end of the 1970s on the initiative of the Rotary Club Torino Est and with the organic collaboration of the Turin public bodies, there was a great boost to go on with the works.

On March 21st, 1981, the complete restructuring of the museum was inaugurated: 23 exhibition rooms and 12 rooms for temporary exhibitions. In the 80s the museum's activity imposed itself, the collection grew and the structure is considered the most important one of the field at an international level.

At the museum's entrance, in the ground floor, there are the naturalist-environmental aspects of the mountain, its traditions, its life, its art and the technological supplies which determined its transformations.

The first floor section tells us about the climbing activity in its historical, exploratory and sport events, completed by the civil services which had been predisposed for the mountain.

In the underground floor, the floor of the "arcades" there are premises available for temporary shows or events. In the museum there are two documentation centres, one belonging to the museum and the other one belonging to the CISDAE (Centro Italiano Studio Documentazione Alpinismo Extraeuropeo) and an Historical Film Library.