Museo Nazionale del Cinema. The Collections

The idea for the Museo Nazionale del Cinema was conceived of in 1941, when Maria Adriana Prolo planned the creation of a site dedicated to collecting documents from the Turin film industry.
Over the years a rich and well-organized collection was formed which tells in its full complexity the history of the “cinematographic show” and makes the Museo del Cinema one of the most important international institutions of its kind.
At present, the Museo owns rare and precious materials, in many cases, one of a kind in the world. The museum’s Collections include 341,440 posters and advertising materials, 750,000 photographs, 9,000 instruments and iconographic documents, many of which trace the history of the Archaeology of cinema. The Film Library holding 12,000 films, silent and sound, is alongside a Sound Library which includes 1,500 cinematographic sound tracks. The Archives has over 7,000 files, while the Library offers 26,000 volumes and over 3,400 periodical titles. Finally, a specific sector conserves the most entertaining items in film merchandising.
In particular, the collection of posters, inserts and various advertising materials prepared for the launch of films covers a time period from the early cinematographic shows to present day films with rare and precious specimens. The photograph collection documents both the history of cinema, from the birth of silent films in Turin to the Italian and foreign sound films which follow, and the history of photography with testimonials from its earliest beginnings and its subsequent developments in the 1800s and the first few decades of the 1900s. The collection of objects from the archaeology of cinema is one of the most significant world-wide and offers a wide and well-organized view of the journey which led to the birth of cinema. Finally the funds from the largest silent film studios make the Museo the chief guardian of all testimonials related to this first important season in the Seventh Art.


Programmes to enhance the Museo’s Collection

From the beginning of the Nineties, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema has developed an extensive programme for the preservation and appreciation of the museum’s collections involving all the sectors in numerous campaigns for restoration, inventory, cataloguing and, more recently, digitalization.
These campaigns involved both the collections of the archaeology of cinema and the history of photography, as well as the collections of film and all the testimonials which contribute to the creation of film and its promotion: screenplays, production notebooks, music scores, sketches, drafts, costumes and props, set photographs, posters and other advertising materials, programmes, period books and periodicals.
This was all made possible thanks to generous and continual support from the Piedmont Region, which included our Museum in a broader programme for the restoration and appreciation of Cultural Heritage in the area, and has thus allowed a vast programme to be carried out for the preservation and development of the museum’s collections, using national and international standards and the most advanced informational systems.

The Collections





Sectors