Lingotto in the context of Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli

A pinacotheca (Latin borrowing from Ancient Greek: πινακοθήκη, romanized: pinakothēkē = πίναξ, pinax, '(painted) board, tablet' + θήκη, thēkē, 'box, chest') was a picture gallery in either ancient Greece or ancient Rome. The name is specifically used for the building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens, Greece. Though Pausanias speaks of the pictures "which time had not effaced", which seems to point to fresco painting, the fact that there is no trace of preparation for stucco on the walls implies that the paintings were easel pictures. The Romans adopted the term for the room in a private house containing pictures, statues, and other works of art.

In the modern world the word is often used as a name for a public art gallery concentrating on paintings, mostly in Italy (as "Pinacoteca"), such as the Pinacoteca Vaticana of the Vatican Museums (which is usually meant when the plain word is used), the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan (more often "the Brera" informally), the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli built on the roof of the former Lingotto Fiat factory in Turin, Italy, with others in Bologna and Siena. In Brazil, there is the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. In Paris, the Pinacothèque de Paris. In Munich the three main galleries are called the Alte Pinakothek (old masters), Neue Pinakothek (19th century) and Pinakothek der Moderne. The Pinacotheca, Melbourne, was a gallery for avant-garde art from 1967 to 2002. At Hallbergmoos, near Munich Airport, there was the Pinakothek Hallbergmoos (20th and 21st century) between 2010 and 2014.

Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (Italian: [palˈmiːro toʎˈʎatti] ; 26 March 1893 – 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and statesman, who led Italy's Communist party for nearly forty years, from 1927 until his death. Born into a middle-class family, Togliatti received an education in law at the University of Turin, later served as an officer and was wounded in World War I, and became a tutor. Described as "severe in approach but extremely popular among the Communist base" and "a hero of his time, capable of courageous personal feats", his supporters gave him the nickname il Migliore ("the Best"). In 1930, Togliatti renounced Italian citizenship, and he became a citizen of the Soviet Union. Upon his death, a Soviet city was named after him. Considered one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic, he led Italy's Communist party from a few thousand members in 1943 to two million members in 1946.

Born in Genoa but culturally formed in Turin during the first decades of the 1900s, when the first Fiat workshops were built and the Italian labour movement began its battles, Togliatti's history is linked to that of Lingotto. He helped launch the left-wing weekly L'Ordine Nuovo in 1919, and he was the editor of Il Comunista starting in 1922. He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I), which was founded as the result of a split from the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) in 1921. In 1926, the PCd'I was made illegal, alongside the other parties, by Benito Mussolini's government. Togliatti was able to avoid the destiny of many of his fellow party members who were arrested only because he was in Moscow at the time.