The new Gallery of the Kings at Turin’s Museo Egizio has been inaugurated. The remodeling was carried out as part of preparations for the 2024 celebration of the institution’s bicentennial. In 2023, the scheme drawn up by OMA in collaboration with Andrea Tabocchini won the competition held for the purpose of renovating the museum. The redesign includes a covered courtyard, called Piazza Egizia, and a series of interconnected public public urban halls. Completion of construction works is programmed for 2025.

In 2006, the scenographer Dante Ferretti turned the gallery into a black box. In contrast, the recent intervention restores the building’s 17th-century architecture, showing the vaults and high windows that characterize the space. It also provides context for the Egyptian statues, which came from Karnak Temple, in the ancient city of Thebes, modern-day Luxor. The new arrangement of the monumental sculptures evokes their original placement in the outer and inner spaces of the temple, including processional avanues and sunlit courtyards.

The current visitor experience of the gallery can be described as a transition from darkness to light. One enters through a dim entryway, where digital projections on the walls depict the history of Karnak. Two luminous openings lead into two main exhibition halls, where aluminum surfaces serve as subtly reflective screens.