Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena: tickets, hours and what you actually see

If you searched for the Enzo Ferrari Museum, there is a good chance you are about to make the mistake most visitors make: this is not the museum in Maranello. They are two different places, 18 kilometres apart, telling two different stories. Maranello has the cars. Modena has the man.

That distinction is worth money as well as time. This one is a fifteen-minute walk from the middle of Modena; the other needs a bus, half a day and a plan.

What follows is the practical layer — prices by season, hours that change four times a year, a discount almost nobody writes about, and an honest answer to whether it is worth the ticket. We wrote it from a few hundred metres away: our apartments are in the same part of town. Everything was checked against official sources in August 2026.

Where it is

Via Paolo Ferrari 85, 41121 Modena. Phone +39 059 4397979.

About seven minutes' walk from Modena station and fifteen from the historic centre. Put usefully: it is the only Motor Valley museum you can reach without a bus or a car, which makes it the one that fits into a half-day, or into the gap between a train arrival and a hotel check-in.

What is actually inside

The museum is two things on one ticket, and knowing that in advance is the difference between liking it and being disappointed.

The birthplace and the workshop

Enzo Ferrari was born here in 1898. The house has been restored and opened, and beside it stands the workshop his father Alfredo ran in the early 1900s, now the space given over to engines.

This is not a car collection. It is the exact spot where a story started, in a provincial house next to a metalworker's shed — which is a stranger and better thing to stand in than another row of red cars.

The yellow gallery

Wrapped around the house is the exhibition hall — more than 2,500 square metres of gallery inside a building of roughly 5,000 gross — under the aluminium roof that has become the museum's signature.

The competition was won in 2004 by Future Systems, to a design by Jan Kaplický. Kaplický died in 2009, and Andrea Morgante, formerly of the same practice, carried the project to its opening in 2012.

The colour is not decoration. It is Giallo Modena, at once the background colour of the Ferrari badge and one of the two official colours of the city of Modena. The slashes across the roof echo the air intakes on a car bonnet.

The current exhibition: The Greatest Hits

Until 16 February 2027 the gallery holds The Greatest Hits, on Ferrari and music.

On display are, among others, Nick Mason's 250 GTO, the 250 GT Lusso of conductor Herbert von Karajan, the SP12 built for Eric Clapton, J Balvin's 512 TR and an SF90 XX, with photography, exclusive material and a podcast series produced by Chora Media.

There is a practical consequence here. If you are travelling with someone who does not care about cars, this exhibition is the most defensible motor museum in the region right now — considerably easier to sell over dinner than a hall of Formula 1 chassis.

Prices

Ticket	September - May	June - August
Adult	€27.00	€32.00
Reduced	€22.00	€24.00
Under 19 with a paying family member	€9.00	€12.00
Musei Ferrari Pass, both museums	€38.00	€42.00
Musei Ferrari Pass, under 19 with family	€12.00	€18.00
Disabled visitors and children under 5	free	free

Note how narrow high season is: June, July and August only. A great many pages online say May to September, and they are wrong — May and September cost the same as November. If you are choosing when to come and the museums are the reason, September is the best window of the year: low-season pricing, long opening hours, and a city that is awake again after August.

Reduced admission covers students over 10, over-65s, carers of disabled visitors and military personnel.

The discount nobody mentions

Arrive on a Trenitalia Tper regional train and admission drops to €20 instead of €27 or €32, and both museums together cost €32 instead of €38 or €42. Show the used Emilia-Romagna regional ticket, from the current year, at the desk.

In high season that is €12 a head. Coming over from Bologna for the day, you are already holding the ticket that does it — the same one you arrived on.

One catch: there is no re-entry. One ticket, one entry.

Hours change four times a year

Period	Open	Last entry
April, May, September, October	9:30 - 19:00	18:15
June, July, August	9:00 - 19:00	18:15
November to March	9:30 - 18:00	17:15

Open daily, closed 25 December and 1 January.

The mistake we watch people make: arriving at 17:30 in January expecting an hour and a half, when the desk stopped selling at 17:15. From November to March this museum shuts earlier than anyone expects.

How long, and when to go

An hour and a half on average; two hours if you listen to the audio material and take the exhibition slowly.

The best slot is the first hour after opening, before the tour groups. The worst is mid-afternoon at a spring weekend, or any day during a city event.

One local note: during the Motor Valley Fest in late spring this museum is as full as it ever gets. If the museum is the point and the festival is not, that is precisely the week to avoid — and pricing is still low season through May anyway.

If you can only do one, which one

Choose Modena if: you have no car; you care about the man and the origins more than lap times; you are travelling with someone who is lukewarm about cars, which the music exhibition solves; you have half a day rather than a whole one; or you are arriving or leaving by train and want to fit it around a left-luggage locker.

Choose Maranello if: you want Formula 1, the single-seaters and the trophies; you want to see the company town around the factory; you want the panoramic tour of the Fiorano track, which leaves from there; you want the Formula 1 simulator, which Modena does not have; or you fancy lunch at the Cavallino, the €65 Michelin star opposite the factory gate, which is open every day at midday.

Do both on the Pass if you are staying at least two nights: the 48-hour window lets you split them across two days, and the saving against two single tickets is €16 or €22.

The full comparison, with the shuttle and the timings, is in the Ferrari and Lamborghini museums from Modena; the Maranello side has its own guide in Ferrari Museum Maranello.

Around the museum

The museum is not in the historic centre, and that turns out to be an advantage: it sits in the part of Modena where people actually live.

The station is a few minutes away, which makes it a good first or last stop of a trip — doable with your bags in left luggage. The historic centre is a quarter of an hour on foot, along the tree-lined avenues that ring the old walls.

If you want to eat near it rather than walk back into town, head down towards the covered market: the Mercato Albinelli closes in the early afternoon, so it works as a mid-morning stop or an early lunch, never as dinner.

With children, and with limited mobility

It works well with children. The cars, the projections and the audio content hold attention, and the pricing helps: under-19s with a paying family member pay €9 in low season, which makes a family visit sensible — not something you can take for granted in this region. Under-5s are free.

The GT simulator is not for small children: as at Maranello there is a minimum height, and it is charged separately.

On access, the news is good twice over: the pavilion is a modern building designed to be crossed without steps, and entry is free for disabled visitors, with the reduced rate for a carer. The birthplace, being a restored historic house, is a different shape from the gallery — if step-free access is a firm requirement, a call to +39 059 4397979 before you travel settles it in two minutes.

What not to expect

• Not the factory. Ferrari's own site restricts plant visits to clients and Formula 1 sponsors. The "factory tour" most people search for largely does not exist.
• Not Formula 1. The single-seaters and the trophies are at Maranello. This is the man and the origins.
• Not a vast collection. It is a gallery with a rotating display, not hundreds of cars.
• Not re-entry. One entry per ticket.
• Not the same museum as Maranello. This is mistake number one, and people arrive in Modena convinced they have already seen it.

Is it worth the ticket?

The honest answer depends on what you came for, and it is worth separating two questions people run together.

As a car museum, on cars-per-euro, Maranello wins. More vehicles, the Formula 1 hall, the trophies, the pit box.

As a place, Modena wins, and it is not close. There is exactly one building in the world where Enzo Ferrari was born, and one workshop where his father worked metal at the start of the last century, and they are both inside this ticket. What you are paying for is not a display of cars but the origin point of a story — which, at €27, is roughly what a decent lunch for two costs in this city.

Where it stops being worth it: if you have already done Maranello, expect this to be a smaller version of it, and have no interest in the man. Then it is a well-designed gallery with a temporary exhibition, and €27 is a lot for ninety minutes.

Where it becomes obviously worth it: if you are in Modena anyway, without a car, with a half-day and a curiosity. There is nothing else in the city that gets you this close to why any of the rest of it exists.

Two extras worth knowing

There is a GT simulator here — Maranello has the Formula 1 one — charged separately, at around €25.

And an offer that rarely appears in guides: museum ticket holders can access the Autodromo di Modena for 15 minutes at a discounted €35. It is a separate thing, arranged separately, but it is the cheapest way in the area to actually be on a circuit.

Making a day of it

1. The museum at opening, on foot. Ninety minutes.
2. Lunch in the centre, fifteen minutes' walk away. The local rule is that the best cooking happens at midday, and several of the best trattorie serve only then: where to eat in Modena has them with hours and prices.
3. Afternoon in Maranello on the 800 bus if you bought the Pass — or the next day, since it runs on 48 hours.
4. Or afternoon in the city: the Duomo, the Ghirlandina tower and Piazza Grande are a UNESCO World Heritage site and sit in one square of streets, as what to see in Modena explains.

Tickets and tours for the area are collected on our experiences page, with a secure checkout and instant confirmation.

Where to stay

All four of our apartments are walking distance from this museum, which is why this page is written by us and not by a listings portal.

The two on viale Vittorio Veneto are the easiest if you are driving: they sit outside the limited traffic zone, so there is no permit to arrange, the car goes in the public bays in front of the door, and the museum is a walk. Modena Prestige is on the ground floor with six steps at the entrance; the penthouse further along the avenue is on the seventh floor with a lift and a terrace facing the Ghirlandina.

The other two are inside the old walls, on Piazza Mazzini and via De' Correggi, a few minutes from the Duomo; for those we handle the €10-a-day traffic-zone permit if you arrive by car.

You book directly with us, with no platform commission. All four are on our apartments page.

Read before you go

Getting to Modena covers airports, trains and coaches — and matters for one specific reason here: arriving on a regional train is worth €7 off this ticket. If you are driving, the Modena ZTL and parking in Modena should be read before, not after: the fines arrive months later. Coming over for the day, Modena as a day trip from Bologna is the version to read.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Enzo Ferrari Museum the same as the Ferrari Museum in Maranello? No, and this is the most common and most expensive mistake. They are two separate museums 18 km apart. Modena holds the house where Enzo Ferrari was born and his father's workshop, inside a modern gallery. Maranello sits inside the Ferrari site and covers the cars, Formula 1 and the factory. The combined Musei Ferrari Pass covers both within a 48-hour window.

How much is a ticket to the Enzo Ferrari Museum? €27 for adults from September to May and €32 from June to August. Reduced is €22 or €24, under-19s with a paying family member pay €9 or €12, and entry is free for disabled visitors and children up to 5. Arrive on an Emilia-Romagna regional train and show the used ticket: admission is €20 in any season.

What are the opening hours? They change four times a year: 9:30-19:00 in April, May, September and October; 9:00-19:00 from June to August; 9:30-18:00 from November to March. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing, so 18:15 in summer months and 17:15 from November to March. Open daily, closed 25 December and 1 January.

How long does the visit take? An hour and a half on average, closer to two with the temporary exhibition and the audio content. There is no re-entry on the same ticket, so do not step out for lunch expecting to come back in.

Can you walk there from central Modena? Yes, and it is the only motor museum in the Motor Valley you can. It is about seven minutes from Modena train station and a quarter of an hour from the historic centre. Maranello needs a bus, Sant'Agata and Fiorano need a car.

What is on at the moment? The Greatest Hits, about Ferraris owned by music legends, running until 16 February 2027. It includes Nick Mason's 250 GTO, conductor Herbert von Karajan's 250 GT Lusso, the SP12 built for Eric Clapton and J Balvin's 512 TR, with a podcast series produced by Chora Media.

Is the Musei Ferrari Pass worth it? Only if you are genuinely doing both museums. The Pass is €38 from September to May and €42 from June to August against €27 or €32 for one, saving €16 or €22 on two single tickets, and it runs on a 48-hour window. But if you arrive by regional train, both museums together cost €32, which beats the Pass in any season.

Who designed the building? Jan Kaplický of Future Systems, who won the competition in 2004. Kaplický died in 2009 and Andrea Morgante, formerly of the same practice, saw it through to the 2012 opening. The yellow aluminium roof uses Giallo Modena, which is both the background colour of the Ferrari badge and one of the two official colours of the city.