Museum of Criminal Anthropology Cesare Lombroso of Turin

The Museum of Criminal Anthropology of Turin exhibits the collections collected mainly for the studies of Cesare Lombroso in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, consisting of anatomical preparations, drawings, photographs, bodies of crime, artisanal and artistic productions, including valuable ones, made by inmates in asylums and prisons.

The Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology is a Turin museum founded in 1876 by the physician and anthropologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909).

The exhibition is part of the museum system of the University of Turin.

The Museum of Criminal Psychiatry and Anthropology was officially inaugurated in 1898, starting from the private collection gathered by Cesare Lombroso during his life.

As Lombroso himself writes: “The first nucleus of the collection began in the army, where, in addition to measuring thousands of soldiers craniologically, I had carefully preserved the skulls and brains of the dead; this collection gradually grew, with the stripping of the old Sardinian, Valtellinesi, Lucchesi, Piedmontese burial grounds, made by me and my friends from Turin and Pavia.

Not a day went by before in Pavia first, in Pesaro and then in Turin I did not try to increase the collection with the skulls of the madmen and criminals who died in asylums and prisons ”.

Map: Museum of Criminal Anthropology Cesare Lombroso of Turin