The Palazzo Madama Archives have been set up to preserve the documentation collected during the planning stage of the restoration work and of the functional renovation of the building so that it could be opened to the public. The documentary material (graphics, texts and photographs) that were amassed during the research work constitute an enormous resource for studying the building. The collections available for consultation are as follows:

• A photographic campaign of about 500 drawings illustrating the history of Palazzo Madama, dating from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century, which are now in a number of Italian institutions and archives.
  The following were consulted during the course of the project:
  Archivio d'Andrade at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin; Archivio d'Andrade, at the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e il Paesaggio del Piemonte; Archivio dei Lavori Pubblici della Città di Torino, Divisione XVI; Archivio dell'Ufficio Tecnico dei Lavori Pubblici della Città di Torino, Divisione I; Archivio di Stato di Torino; Archivio Centrale dello Stato di Roma; Archivio Storico della Città di Torino; Archivio Storico della Soprintendenza per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico del Piemonte; Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna; Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Turin; Biblioteca Reale, Turin; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence; Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano, Turin; Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d'Arte Antica della Città di Torino; Politecnico di Torino, Facoltà di Architettura, Dipartimento Casa-Città, Laboratorio di Storia e Beni Culturali, Fondo Melano.

• Archive holdings on the history of Palazzo Madama, from accounting records and thirteenth-century inventories of the medieval castle right through to the administration documents drafted after the Second World War.

• Over 6000 photographs taken from 1866 to the present day, illustrating the life of the Palazzo, its architecture, the furnishings in its rooms, the arrangement of exhibition areas for the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, and exhibitions and events.

• A historical and architectural survey of the entire building, starting with Filippo Juvarra’s façade-staircase (1998) as well as the fifteenth-century façades of the Acaia castle and all the interior premises of the Palazzo (2000-2002). Graphic renderings were created using a vector-based CAD system with a raster program for processing the photographs

• Stratigraphic sampling campaigns and fact-finding investigations on the decorations, plasterwork and stuccoes, stone facings, masonry layers and architectural structures in the lead-up to the 1997-2006 restoration operations.

• Restoration project to modernise the systems installations and make the premises fit for exhibition purposes in Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, which reopened on 16 December 2006.

INFORMATION AND OPENING HOURS

The Archives are still being arranged but they will be open by appointment every Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., as from 26 March 2008.

If you have any particular questions concerning your studies, or comments or suggestions concerning the Palazzo Madama Archives, you can contact us at:

archiviopm@fondazionetorinomusei.it