Museo di Antropologia Criminale Cesare Lombroso

The museum showcases collections of anatomical specimens, photographs, and artifacts related to criminal anthropology, founded by Cesare Lombroso.

Planning your visit

Cesare Lombroso founded criminal anthropology, and he was wrong about almost everything. His theory that criminals were evolutionary throwbacks identifiable by physical features — skull shape, jaw size, ear form, tattoos — provided pseudo-scientific cover for racism and for eugenic thinking, and it was influential across Europe for decades.

The museum in Turin holds his collection: skulls, anatomical preparations, photographs of prisoners, criminals' possessions, weapons, tattooed skin, and the art produced by asylum inmates, alongside Lombroso's own preserved head, displayed at his instruction.

The current presentation is explicitly critical, framing the material as a history of a discredited science and of what it justified, rather than endorsing it. That framing is necessary and mostly successful, though the objects remain uncomfortable — many were taken from the poor and the institutionalised without consent.

There have been repeated Italian campaigns to close it or repatriate remains.

Bookable options are museum visits. Current availability is listed below.