Palazzo Reale, Torino

The Armeria Reale Museum is dedicated to antique weaponry. The armoury was set up by King Charles Albert and inaugurated in 1837. It is in the magnificent Queen’s Gallery, decorated between 1738 and 1742 by the court painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont. The creation of the museum is due to Vittorio Seyssel D’Aix, artillery captain and first director of the armoury, who gathered works from the arsenals of Turin and Genoa, from collections of antiquities, and from prestigious collections purchased on the antiques market, such as the collection of Alessandro Sanquirico (1833) from Milan and the collection of the Martinengo della Fabbrica (1839) from Brescia.

In 1842, an expansion of the museum took place in the Rotunda designed by Pelagio Palagi. This space was conceived to house more recent collections, such as the Oriental weapons collection. With the beginning of the Republic in 1946, the Armoury, until then under the Ministry of the Royal Household, became a state museum.

The collection has more than five thousand works ranging from Prehistory to the early 20th century and includes the Royal Medal Hall, with more than 60,000 pieces including ancient and modern coins, medals and seals.