Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli

Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli

Turin, Italy · Website


The story

This gallery sits on the roof of the Lingotto, the vast former Fiat factory in Turin whose most famous feature is a car test track running around the top, the one used in the 1969 film The Italian Job. When the plant closed, Renzo Piano converted it, and hung a small steel box above the roofline, the Scrigno, or jewel case.

Inside are just 25 works, the private collection of Gianni and Marella Agnelli, the couple who ran Fiat. It is deliberately tiny and very rich: six Venetian views by Canaletto and two Dresden scenes by Bellotto, a Manet, a Renoir, seven Matisses and two Picassos, and a pair of Canova's dancers poised on their toes, plaster casts the sculptor took from his own marbles.

From the gallery you can step out onto the old test track itself, now planted as a garden, and walk the banked curves where Fiats were once driven flat out above the city.

Ask a follow-up about anything you read. Get the app.

Collection

21 works