Torino: the Car Museum

…A little later – that same afternoon – I am running like a sweaty horse trying to pay for my parking. The target is the Torino museum of cars, and I don’t yet know that the GPS has brought us to a wrong place: some time ago the museum was in fact here, in the old university building. But – alas – it is quite a bit further down the road and with having only decided to get there one hour before the ticket office closes, we are now desperately late. After driving with one half of my head and punching in addresses with the other, we do arrive to the grand new building of the museum, just in time to learn that they’ve closed the cash register two minutes ago and can’t sell us tickets. However, the problem is solved with the Italian elegancy: they let us in for free (not before some pleading and telling how we came all the way from Norway just to see the museum). I give the astounded lady at the entrance a hug and in we go.

The museum is neatly located over its three floors and the collection is very nicely put together, especially the area with early monstrosities is impressive. The part with modern-time cars is slightly anticlimactic, though: it is almost exclusively Italian brands, and with that – Ferraris are scarce and Lambourginis are not present. Is Maserati Italian? Well, that is to show the level of my knowledge about cars. There was one, some ancient racing bolide, and that’s it.

Anyway, the 50 minutes which we had before the closing time was quite enough for the whole museum. And – we were tired enough to be happy to get back into our own air conditioned car.