Enzo Ferrari never walked through the museum that carries his name. He died on 14 August 1988, when it was still a project on paper, and it opened in Maranello on 18 February 1990, the day he would have turned 92. It stands 300 metres from the works where, on 12 March 1947, he started the engine of the first car to bear his name, and its Hall of Victories keeps the cars that won the Formula One championships of 1999 to 2008.
This is the museum at the factory gate, and its surroundings tell as much as its halls. A bus leaves its square for the avenue inside the works and the test track Enzo Ferrari built at Fiorano in 1972. Two cars in its Hall of Victories won 15 Grands Prix each in a single season. Across the road from the factory is the restaurant where he took his lunch, and the street outside carries the name of the son he lost at 24.
In Brief
- The museum opened as the Ferrari Gallery on 18 February 1990, Enzo Ferrari’s birthday; Ferrari has run it since 1995.
- It stands about 300 metres from the Ferrari factory in Maranello, with the Fiorano test track beyond.
- For the company’s 70th anniversary in 2017, a new wing brought its exhibition space to 4,100 square metres.
- Its Hall of Victories shows the single-seaters that won the Formula One world championships from 1999 to 2008.
- A panoramic bus tour leaves the museum square for the factory’s Viale Enzo Ferrari and the Fiorano circuit; passengers stay aboard.
- In 2019 more than 400,000 people visited the museum.
History
Maranello was a small town in the province of Modena when Enzo Ferrari moved his works there from Modena in 1943, in the middle of the war, and the Allies bombed the new factory twice. On 12 March 1947 he started the engine of the 125 S, the first car to bear his name, and in May it won in Rome, Ferrari’s first victory. The town has been the company’s address ever since.
The museum began as an idea of the 1980s. Enzo Ferrari died on 14 August 1988, aged 90, while it was still a project on paper, and after a short pause the work went on. The Ferrari Gallery opened on 18 February 1990, the day he would have turned 92. In 1995 the company took over its running, and in time the Gallery became the Ferrari Museum.
For Ferrari’s 70th anniversary the museum grew. On 25 May 2017, Sergio Marchionne, then chairman and chief executive, and Piero Ferrari, Enzo’s son, opened a new wing of more than 600 square metres, joined to the old building by a long, continuous facade of glass. The exhibition space reached 4,100 square metres, with a hall of about 300 square metres beside it for events and school groups.
The Collection
The Hall of Victories is the museum’s still centre. It holds the single-seaters that won Ferrari the Formula One world championships from 1999 to 2008, each with its original engine, beside the trophies and the drivers’ own helmets. They come from the decade in which the team took eight constructors’ titles and six drivers’ titles, and which left Ferrari with more constructors’ titles than any other team.
Two of the cars won 15 Grands Prix each in a single season: the F2002 and the F2004. In 2004 Ferrari won 15 of the 18 races, Michael Schumacher 13 of them, and the F2004 gave him the last of his seven drivers’ titles with four races still to run. The F2004 was built on the F2003-GA before it: the hall shows one idea, refined season after season.
Elsewhere, the museum has rebuilt Enzo Ferrari’s office, presenting it as the room where the company was conceived. In a building given to his cars, it is the one place given to the man.
Much of the rest of the museum changes from one year to the next. Its halls are given to exhibitions that retell the company through its cars; in 2017, “Infinite Red” set the 500 F2, with which Alberto Ascari won Ferrari’s first drivers’ title in 1952, in the same rooms as the 250 GTO and the LaFerrari. Those who come back find a different museum around the same hall.
It is a museum in working surroundings. A few hundred metres away, Ferrari builds its cars in a works designed by Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Massimiliano Fuksas and Mario Cucinella, whose e-building opened on 20 June 2024, and tests them at Fiorano. History and work share one street.
It is also the keeper of the decade that gave Ferrari more constructors’ titles than any other team in Formula One. The cars of that run stand in one room, with their engines, and they are seen a short walk from where they were built.
And it is visited accordingly: more than 400,000 people came in 2019.
Visitor Experience
The museum stands on Via Alfredo Dino Ferrari, the street that carries the name of Enzo’s son Dino, who died in 1956 at 24. The factory gate is a short walk away, and across the road from it the Cavallino restaurant, a farmhouse that became Enzo Ferrari’s canteen in 1950, reopened in 2021 with Massimo Bottura in the kitchen.
Inside, the museum comes closer to the paddock than most dare: semi-professional Formula One simulators, a real tyre change to try one’s hand at, a set where visitors climb aboard a Ferrari. Leave the Hall of Victories for last, and give it time.
The panoramic tour is the stop’s quiet privilege. A bus leaves the museum square, runs along Viale Enzo Ferrari, the avenue of a works designed by Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Massimiliano Fuksas and Mario Cucinella, and goes on to the Fiorano circuit. Nobody steps off and no photographs are allowed: it is a tour taken with the eyes.
Give the museum two hours, and the panoramic tour and lunch at the Cavallino the rest of a morning. With the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena, 18 kilometres away and sold on one ticket with this one, the day is complete.
Climate
| Month | High °C | Low °C | Rainfall mm | Rainy days | Daylight h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 7° | 0° | 61 | 9 | 9.3 |
| February | 9° | 0° | 79 | 9 | 10.5 |
| March | 13° | 3° | 80 | 9 | 12.0 |
| April | 17° | 7° | 97 | 12 | 13.5 |
| May | 21° | 11° | 101 | 12 | 14.8 |
| June | 26° | 15° | 76 | 9 | 15.5 |
| July | 29° | 18° | 56 | 7 | 15.2 |
| August | 28° | 18° | 68 | 9 | 14.0 |
| September | 23° | 14° | 91 | 10 | 12.5 |
| October | 18° | 10° | 102 | 11 | 11.0 |
| November | 12° | 5° | 114 | 12 | 9.6 |
| December | 8° | 1° | 85 | 10 | 8.9 |
Monthly averages for Maranello, 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
Maranello lies at the foot of the Apennines, 16 kilometres south of Modena by road and 48 from Bologna, whose airport is 44 kilometres away. The A1 passes Modena on its way from Milan, 184 kilometres to the north-west. The museum stands about 300 metres from the factory, and the Fiorano circuit lies some 600 metres to the north-west.
Around it lies the Motor Valley, as the region calls its stretch of Emilia. The Umberto Panini Collection and its Maseratis are 16 kilometres away, Modena’s circuit 17, the Enzo Ferrari Museum 18, on the street in Modena where Enzo was born, Pagani at San Cesario sul Panaro 23, and Lamborghini’s museum at Sant’Agata Bolognese 35. Imola, whose circuit carries the names of Enzo and Dino Ferrari, is 89 kilometres to the south-east, and to the south the SS12 climbs over the Apennines to the Abetone pass, 70 kilometres away.
Address
43 Via Alfredo Dino Ferrari
41053 Maranello
Provincia di Modena, Emilia-Romagna
Italy
Website