A Trip to the Lamborghini Museum

December 29, 2008 · Updated September 2026 · BootsnAll

You don’t need to be a car person to know the name. Lamborghini has been building some of the world’s most wanted supercars since 1963 (including one of the most expensive Italian cars ever made), and it has always built them in the same place: Sant’Agata Bolognese, a farm town about half an hour’s drive northwest of Bologna. The company’s museum sits right at the factory gate, and if you’re a car nut it deserves a day of your Italy itinerary.

>> Skip straight to how to get there or the hours and tickets.

The museum then and now

The Museo Lamborghini opened in 2001. When I visited, it was free, nobody asked me to book anything, and the people at the factory front desk (Lamborghini employees, not tour guides, and not especially interested in tourists) simply waved us over to wander on our own. I used to joke that it was the only thing with the Lamborghini name on it that didn’t cost a small fortune.

That museum is gone. Lamborghini renovated it in 2016 to make room for more cars, and today it runs like any major museum: it’s open every day, entry is ticketed, and you book online. What hasn’t changed is the reason to come. You’re standing on the site where every Lamborghini has been built for more than 60 years, and the upper floor still looks toward the production line.

The sign at the entrance to the Lamborghini factory

What you’ll see

The museum is laid out over two floors and built around a family tree of every model the company has produced, so you can follow Lamborghini from Ferruccio Lamborghini’s first 350 GT of 1963 through the Miura and Countach to current cars. Alongside the production models are one-offs and concept cars. The Veneno, the Sesto Elemento and the Miura concept were all part of the collection at the last update. The display rotates and the company stages anniversary exhibitions (2026 marks 60 years of the Miura), so the lineup on your visit will vary.

The one thing I noticed on my visit that I still love: some of the older cars showed their age. Look closely and you’d find little nicks in the otherwise perfect paint. Many of those cars came from the founder’s own collection, and the chips said they had been driven by people who loved them, not locked in a garage.

In my day the ground floor looked almost like a parking lot, with cars from several decades lined up nose to tail along the walls. I’m not a car person, so I mostly photographed them. The husband, on the other hand, was in heaven. Upstairs were the racing cars of the 1980s and 1990s (Lamborghini supplied Formula 1 engines in that era), plus concept cars and the window onto the factory.

Book the factory tour

If you’ve come all this way, pay for the production line tour. Guided tours start at the museum and take you onto the factory floor at Sant’Agata to see the cars being assembled. They’re sold separately from museum entry, in limited numbers, so book both together on the official museum page as soon as your dates are fixed. The museum alone takes an hour or two. With the tour, plan on a half day.

One more memory from that first visit: unlike just about every museum on the planet, this one didn’t drop us into a gift shop on the way out. We had to ask at the factory front desk, which sent us around the corner, where you can spend a lot of euros on Lamborghini gear.

Yes, that’s a car on the wall

Make it a Motor Valley day

Sant’Agata sits in the middle of what Emilia-Romagna calls its Motor Valley. With a car you can pair Lamborghini with the Museo Ferrari in Maranello, under an hour’s drive south, or with the Museo Enzo Ferrari in Modena on the way. Doing both brands in one day is a lot of driving and a lot of red and yellow paint. If you’re not a true fanatic, pick one per day and spend the evening eating in Bologna or Modena instead.

How to Get to the Lamborghini Museum

By car is by far the easiest. The factory is on the edge of Sant’Agata Bolognese, not in the center or any tourist area. Put “Via Modena 12, Sant’Agata Bolognese” into your GPS; from Bologna it’s roughly 30 minutes, and there’s parking at the factory. Most Italian historic centers, Bologna’s included, are camera-enforced limited traffic zones (ZTL), so if you rent a car in Bologna, pick it up outside the center or at the airport. Our car rental guide covers the rest.

By bus: suburban buses run by TPER link Bologna’s bus station with the center of Sant’Agata Bolognese, and from there the museum is a short walk. Line numbers and timetables change, so look up the current route on the TPER site the day before, and check the last bus back.

By train and bus: the nearest station is San Giovanni in Persiceto, on the Bologna to Verona line. From there it’s a short TPER bus ride or a taxi to Sant’Agata. It’s not faster than the direct bus, but it gives you more departure times.

Address: Museo Automobili Lamborghini, Via Modena 12, 40019 Sant’Agata Bolognese

Hours: Open daily, 9:30 to 18:00 from October to April and 9:30 to 19:00 from May to September. Last entry is an hour before closing. The museum lists a few closure days each year (in autumn 2026, 6 and 20 October), so check before you go.

Tickets: Book museum entry and factory tours online through the official museum page, which has current prices. Factory tours are sold separately and start at the museum.