The archaeological museum of Turin maintains the historic designation of the Museum of Antiquities in order to emphasize the continuity of this historic institution. Its origins date back to the mid-sixteenth century, with the collection of the Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, then increased by Carlo Emanuele I and placed in the gallery is created to accommodate the ducal collections. In 1723 Victor Amadeus II, King of Sardinia, commissioned the distinguished scholar Scipione Maffei to arrange the collection of tombstones, which together with the existing antiquities, was set up in the Palace of the University. During the nineteenth century almost all classical antiquities were moved to the building of the Academy of Sciences, in the meantime had found a place where a large collection of Egyptian artefacts: thus was born the Royal Museum of Antiquities greek-Roman and Egyptian.

In 1940, with the final separation from the Egyptian Museum, created the new Museum of Antiquities, which since 1982 has found a home in the self-nineteenth-century glasshouses of the Royal Palace, where it is currently housed the historic core of the collections. The collections of antiquities of Savoy, to which were added as a result of other prestigious donations and acquisitions, allowing them to trace the evolution of taste and collecting evidence of the growing interest in archeology in Piedmont.

A new pavilion, created in 1998, includes the section of the Piedmont region along the exhibition unfolds a great trip back in time, to meet one after the other, as in the reality of the excavation, and the many amazing testimonies of Piedmont old. The basement of the new wing of the Royal Palace is a unique connection with the archaeological area of the Roman Theatre and is currently used to host temporary exhibitions, waiting for the new rearrangement of the collections and the link with the Royal Polo.