In 1920 Enzo Ferrari sold the house he was born in, and his father’s workshop beside it, to buy a racing car. Ninety-two years later both opened as his museum in Modena, on 10 March 2012, beside a gallery under a yellow roof shaped like the bonnet of a car. The workshop that once worked metal for the railways holds Ferrari’s engines, and the gallery tells the life of the man who sold it.
This is the museum of the man rather than the marque, and it is built on his beginnings. The restoration kept his father’s name, lettered on the workshop wall. The yellow of the roof is Modena’s colour, and the one Enzo chose as the ground of the Prancing Horse. Its architect died three months before the first stone was laid. And the boy who once dreamed of singing operetta has shared its halls with Modena’s other famous son, Luciano Pavarotti.
In Brief
- The museum opened on 10 March 2012 on the site where Enzo Ferrari was born in 1898; Ferrari has run it since 2014.
- It joins the restored house and workshop of his father, Alfredo, to a new gallery under a yellow roof.
- The roof is 3,300 square metres of aluminium, with ten incisions drawn after the air intakes on a car’s bonnet.
- Jan Kaplický of Future Systems won the design competition in 2004; after his death in 2009, Andrea Morgante completed the building.
- The old workshop holds an exhibition of Ferrari engines, from the twelve-cylinders to Formula One.
- In 2019 more than 200,000 people visited the museum.
History
Enzo Ferrari was born in Modena in February 1898, in the family house beside the workshop his father, Alfredo, had founded. By his own account he was born on the 18th, and that is the day the family kept; his birth certificate says the 20th. The workshop worked metal for the nearby railways, and the boy dreamed of other things: of singing operetta, and of racing. By 1916 he had lost both his father and his elder brother, and in 1920 he sold the house and the workshop to buy a racing car.
The house waited more than eighty years. In 2003 the city, the province and the chamber of commerce of Modena, the Automobile Club d’Italia and Ferrari set up a foundation to recover it, and in 2004 Jan Kaplický of Future Systems, the London practice, won the competition for its museum. He died in Prague on 14 January 2009. The first stone was laid on 20 April, and Andrea Morgante, his former associate, saw the building through to its opening on 10 March 2012.
The restoration kept what the house had to say. On the workshop’s outer wall the old lettering survives: Officina Meccanica Alfredo Ferrari. In 2014 Ferrari took the museum over, and runs it as one with its museum in Maranello.
The Collection
The gallery is a single white room under the yellow roof. Its floor slopes gently down from the entrance into the half of the building that lies below ground, and the cars, as many as 21 at a time, stand on low plinths to be seen from every side. Every half hour, 19 projectors turn the hall into a cinema for the life of Enzo Ferrari.
The engines are next door, in the workshop where Alfredo Ferrari worked metal for the railways. They are set out by family: the small engines of one to six cylinders, the classic twelves, the eights, the turbos and the engines of Formula One. Ferrari’s engines have come home to the workshop Enzo sold to go racing.
Much of the rest changes with the years, for the gallery takes a new exhibition about once a year. In 2015 it paired Enzo Ferrari with Luciano Pavarotti, born in Modena in 1935, who chose an F40 when he wanted a Ferrari. The F40 came back in 2026, in an exhibition of musicians’ Ferraris that opened on Enzo’s birthday. The same exhibition showed Herbert von Karajan’s 250 GT Lusso, and the SP12 EC, the one-off Ferrari built in 2012 for Eric Clapton: a 458 Italia beneath, and above it the lines of the 512 BB, his favourite.
Maranello keeps the company’s story; Modena keeps the man’s. Here it begins before the first Ferrari, with a boy born beside a workshop, his father’s name on its wall, and the ambition that made him sell them both.
It is also the last building of Future Systems, Jan Kaplický’s London practice: a roof that reads as a bonnet, in Modena’s yellow, the colour Enzo chose as the ground of the Prancing Horse, reaching around the old house like an open hand.
And it draws its own crowds: more than 200,000 people came in 2019, and in 2025 the two Ferrari museums together received more than 890,000.
Visitor Experience
The museum stands at 85 Via Paolo Ferrari, about 700 metres on foot from Modena’s railway station. The gallery’s glass front, curved and leaning back, faces the old house and holds its reflection.
Inside, the visit moves between two buildings: the life of the man in the gallery, his engines in the workshop. The historic building also holds a simulator room and the shop, and there is a café.
Give the museum an hour and a half, and time the gallery for the film. One ticket covers this museum and the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, and a shuttle bus runs between the two. With the cathedral and Piazza Grande a short walk away, Modena makes the rest of the day.
Climate
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Rainfall mm | Rainy days | Daylight h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 8° | 0° | 51 | 8 | 9.3 |
| February | 10° | 1° | 64 | 8 | 10.5 |
| March | 14° | 4° | 65 | 9 | 12.0 |
| April | 18° | 8° | 84 | 12 | 13.5 |
| May | 23° | 12° | 85 | 11 | 14.8 |
| June | 28° | 17° | 64 | 9 | 15.5 |
| July | 30° | 19° | 51 | 7 | 15.2 |
| August | 30° | 20° | 59 | 9 | 14.0 |
| September | 24° | 15° | 79 | 9 | 12.5 |
| October | 19° | 11° | 83 | 10 | 11.0 |
| November | 13° | 6° | 92 | 11 | 9.6 |
| December | 8° | 1° | 70 | 9 | 8.9 |
Monthly averages for Modena, IT, 1991–2020.
Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026 (CC BY 4.0).
Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains.
Location
The museum stands at the northern edge of Modena’s old town, 1.4 kilometres on foot from Piazza Grande, where the cathedral, its tower and the square have been a World Heritage Site since 1997. Maserati’s works on Viale Ciro Menotti, where it has built cars since 1940, are 600 metres away. Bologna lies 46 kilometres away by road, its airport 41, and Milan 174 to the north-west.
Around it lies the Motor Valley. Modena’s circuit is 12 kilometres away, Pagani at San Cesario sul Panaro 14, the Umberto Panini Collection and its Maseratis 15, the Ferrari Museum in Maranello 18, and Lamborghini’s museum at Sant’Agata Bolognese 19. Luciano Pavarotti’s house museum is 11 kilometres to the south, and Imola, whose circuit carries the names of Enzo and Dino Ferrari, 86 to the south-east.
Address
85 Via Paolo Ferrari
41121 Modena
Provincia di Modena, Emilia-Romagna
Italy
Website