Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are among the most intensely studied nanoscale materials, finding numerous applications in several fields such as catalysis, biomedicine and microelectronics. [1] AuNPs can be synthesized by several chemical procedures reported in literature, where in general the Au(III) precursor is reduced by a reducing agent and the AuNPs formed stabilized by the use of a stabilizing agent. [2] Recently, we presented stable silica-supported gold nanoparticles suitable for catalysis, obtained by using as the only reactants a gold precursor, chloroauric acid (HAuCl4), and commercial polyethyleneimine-functionalized silica beads (SiO2-PEI), with the need for neither external reducing agents nor conventional stabilizing moieties. [3] In this work we describe another convenient method to prepare functionalized-silica nanoparticles able to reduce in situ HAuCl4 precursor. The silica nanoparticles were synthetized, first, by co-condensation of tetraethoxysilane and an organo-silane alkyne-terminated (PPTEOS) (SiO2-Yne) [4] and then post-functionalized by thiol/yne coupling with cysteamine, silica nanoparticles SiO2-Thio-Yne are obtained with sulphide and primary amine, known for their capability to stabilize gold nanoparticles. [5] . Scheme 1. Synthesis of alkyne-modified silica nanoparticles and subsequent thiol/yne coupling. By simply adding an aqueous solution of HAuCl4 to SiO2-Yne (d 77 ± 10 nm) or to SiO2-Thio-Yne we achieved in both case AuNPs anchored on the silica surface. These systems were fully-characterized by FT-IR, XPS spectroscopy, DLS ,UV-Vis, TOF-SIMS and TEM microscopy.