Italy is a wonderful country. If you want to witness world history, Italy is the best place. It has some excellent museums, art, and cultural galleries that are the witness of ancient world history as well as Europe. Let’s see some famous museums, art and cultural galleries in Italy. It helps you to find those places for you to see.
Uffizi Gallery
Source image: upload.wikimedia.org
Like any precious treasure, the Uffizi Gallery lets itself be conquered after some arduous trials: pathos at the entrance, queues, and chaos to find the right access door, 141 stairs to the second-floor loggia, and then… given the delights of the frescoed ceilings and a labyrinth of rooms full of works! Be patient if the museum par excellence reserves all kinds of surprises for you. The Uffizi was not designed to accommodate 10,000 visitors a day but only to house offices, a theater, and absolutely private spaces strictly guarded by the Medici Grand Dukes. The beginning of the monumental construction dates back to 1560, by the hand of Giorgio Vasari, who conceived the Gallery as a brilliant perspective machine to enhance the Tower of Palazzo Vecchio. A teeming ensemble of functional spaces for the Arts headquarters, the Officers of Gracia, the Officers of Honesty, and the Grand Ducal Manufactures. Practical spaces reserved for the family, staff, and very few elected guests of the Medici. The Medici had always developed private collections, but the concept of space to accommodate “wonders of all sorts” triumphs with Francesco I, who wanted to build a small octagonal heart inside the Gallery that could accommodate them. A small treasure chest, the Tribuna, was inaugurated in 1584. Sculptures, cameos, books, paintings, coins, armor, a potpourri of elements were reorganized only from 1769 with Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena. He was responsible for the actual opening of the Uffizi Gallery to the public in 1769, certainly without expecting that it would become one of the most visited museums in the world one day.
The National Archeological Museum of Naples
Source image: cdn-imgix.headout.com
The Museum was born thanks to the interest of the Bourbons for art and culture. In particular, two family members gave life to this exhibition space. Charles III, King of Naples since 1734, began the exploration of the territory destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. C., thanks to which the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were found. In addition, he brought Naples a rich collection of Roman archeological finds, moved from the city of Lazio, and inherited from his mother, Elisabetta Farnese. However, Ferdinand VI brought together the Roman part of the Farnese collection, and the Vesuvian finds in a single building, the Palazzo degli Studi. During the French domination, which opened the first part of the nineteenth century, the first exhibitions were organized, but only with the return of the Bourbons can we speak of a real museum building. This, in fact, was named the Royal Bourbon Museum, which became a National Museum with the unification of Italy in 1860. After almost a hundred years, part of the finds from the Farnese collection was moved to form what is now the Capodimonte Museum. First housed in the Palazzo Degli Studi, now the Capodimonte Museum is one of the unmissable attractions of your visit to Naples. Here tradition and novelty are intertwined, thanks to the presence, on the one hand, of some of the masterpieces of Titian, Parmigianino, Caravaggio, and Raphael, and on the other, of Andy Warhol’s homage to the city. Suppose you want to dedicate more time to art. In that case, you cannot miss the controversial Chapel of San Severo, which will welcome you with its sculptures suspended between beauty and mystery, talent and alchemy.
Egyptian Museum of Turin
Source image: thebestofturin.com
In 1824, King Carlo Felice of Savoy founded the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Turin, better known as the Egyptian Museum, acquiring a collection of 5,628 artifacts brought together by Bernardino Drovetti, consul of France during the occupation in Egypt. King Carlo Felice brought together the Drovetti collection with other collections, including Donati and other antiquities owned by the House of Savoy, thus giving life to the first Egyptian Museum in the world. The Museum’s collection was then added to other findings made between 1900 and 1935 by the Italian Archeological Mission and brought to Italy. At the time of these findings, the archeological finds found by various foreign expeditions were divided between the country of origin of the expedition and Egypt. Today things are different. The artifacts found remain in Egypt. The Egyptian Museum of Turin is now housed in the Palazzo dell’Accademia delle Scienze, the imposing seventeenth-century building whose construction began in 1679 by the architect Michelangelo Grove on the original Guarino Guarini project. Today in the Museum, about 6,500 archeological finds are exhibited, but over 26,000 are deposited in the warehouses. The finds cover a period ranging from the Paleolithic to the Coptic era, namely native Egyptian Christians. The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Turin is considered, for the value of its finds, the most important Egyptian Museum in the world after the one in Cairo. Therefore, it is worth visiting to admire the testimonies of one of the greatest civilizations in human history.
Vatican Museums, Vatican City
Source image: joyofmuseums.com
The construction of the Vatican began in 1447 with Pope Niccolò V, who commissioned the architect Bernardo Rossellino to design the new Basilica of San Pietro and the painter Fra Angelico to decorate the Nicolina chapel. In 1471, Sixtus IV ordered the construction of a new chapel, the Sistine Chapel, with decorations painted by artists such as Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino, who later, in 1508, Michelangelo Buonarroti repainted by order of Julius II. The Vatican Museums were born with the private works of Julius II, who, when he was elected Pope in 1503, transferred his collection to the Octagonal Courtyard. Among the works, we find the Apollo del Belvedere, the Happy Venus, the Nile, the Tiber River, the Sleeping Ariadne, and the Laocoon group and their children. New buildings were then built connected by tunnels to the existing ones. Julius II commissioned the decoration of Raphael’s rooms and the spiral ramp designed by Donato Bramante as access to the upper floors from the Belvedere garden. Visiting the Vatican Museums is a unique experience that should be experienced at least once in a lifetime. This visit is a long and interesting journey that will fill you with emotions through more than twenty centuries of history and art. The Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s rooms, and the Pinacoteca are only part of many collections of inestimable value. The Vatican Museums bring together one of the most impressive and extensive collections in the world belonging to the Catholic Church, with more than 70,000 objects exhibited on an area of 42,000 meters.
The Brera Art Gallery
Source image: theartpostblog.com
The history of the Pinacoteca di Brera, one of the richest and most important museums in the world, began more than two hundred years ago when it was established to support the Academy of Fine Arts as a place where students could compare themselves with the works of the great masters for real. Today in the rooms of the Pinacoteca, you can admire masterpieces such as The Marriage of the Virgin by Raphael, the Dead Christ by Mantegna, the Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, the Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio, the Kiss by Hayez, but also works by the Flemish Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, frescoes torn from Milanese and Lombard churches by Bernardino Luini, Vincenzo Foppa, Bergognone and Bramantino. Works by leading twentieth-century artists such as Boccioni, Carrà, Modigliani, De Pisis, Morandi are partially exhibited, awaiting their definitive location in Palazzo Citterio, where works from the second half of the nineteenth century will also be found, including Fiumana di Pellizza da Volpedo and paintings by Segantini. . The whole Palazzo di Brera which also houses the Braidense Library and the Botanical Garden, as well as the Academy, of course, is of great charm and interest. Aster offers you the opportunity to discover its masterpieces and the wonderful palace in which it is housed with guided tours, thematic itineraries, and workshops for the little ones.
Doge’s Palace, Venice
Source image: upload.wikimedia.org
The building features extraordinary beauty in Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance architectural elements. Inside there are various works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Bellini. For over 1,000 years, 120 doges directed the destiny of Venice from the Doge’s Palace. After crossing the Scala d’Oro (a golden staircase that leads to the second floor of the building), you will visit the halls of the doges and voting, the armory, the courtyards, and the prison. In the Doge’s Apartment, the rooms are decorated extraordinarily; here, you will find works by artists such as Veronese, Titian, and Tintoretto, which illustrate the history of Venice. Continuing the visit, we reach the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, where more than 1,000 people voted for the fate of the Serenissima. There is “Il Paradiso” in this room by Tintoretto, the largest canvas in the world. You can see armor and various types of weapons in the armory, from the most classic to complex firearms. The visit ends with the prison, where you will see cells and wells. The appearance of this area of the building is anything but welcoming. The famous prisoner Casanova fled, in 1756, from the roofs of the building. The visit also crosses the famous Bridge of Sighs, built in the 17th century in Baroque style and allows access to the prison. The bridge’s name derives from the fact that it was crossed by death row inmates, who sighed and observed from its windows, for the last time, the Venetian Lagoon.
Palazzo Altemps
Source image: inexhibit.com
An aristocratic residence was already in the sixteenth century. There was a rich collection of ancient sculptures in a magnificent architectural setting. Palazzo Altemps is the seat of the National Roman Museum dedicated to the history of collecting. Located a few steps from Piazza Navona, near the left bank of the Tiber, in Campo Marzio, the first nucleus of the building was built in the 15th century by the will of Girolamo Riario, lord of Imola, ambitious nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. The building was purchased by Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps, of Austrian origin, nephew of Pope Pius IV. The cardinal established his residence there, which, enlarged and embellished with pictorial decorations, was made worthy of rank by arranging – according to the taste of the time – the magnificent collection of antiquities and the precious book collection. The Altemps lived there for a long time, until the mid-nineteenth century when, due to widowhood and falling in love, the property passed on to Giulio Hardouin, father of Duchessina Maria 1883, married Gabriele in the church of S. Aniceto in Palazzo Altemps D’Annunzio. The building was sold to the Holy See at the end of the century, which assigned it to the Pontifical Spanish College. In 1982, the first act of the acquisition of Palazzo Altemps by the Italian state, a long and rigorous restoration culminated in the great success of the museum’s opening to the public in December 1997.
Galleria Borghese
Source image: upload.wikimedia.org
The Villa Borghese Pinciana, now home to the Borghese Gallery, was built to be a museum, a place of culture, for the display of exemplary images of ancient and modern art, for music, studies in a small library, but also for the contemplation of nature (with rare plants and animals), of fossil samples and finally of the modern technology of the time (for example automata, mirrors, bizarre lenses, and particular clocks), the merits of its architecture are attributable to Flaminio Ponzio, architect of trust of the Pope and the Cardinal. From the Villa, a farm was managed with vineyards, vegetable gardens, hunting, stables, sheds, dovecotes in the towers (whose entrances are still visible), a large aviary, an ice reserve, the wine cave, and even culture of the silkworm. The rarest plants, imported from Holland or the New Indies, and a zoological garden completed the Theater of the Universe wanted by Cardinal Scipione. The rich Borghese collection consists of ancient sculptures, bas-reliefs and mosaics, and paintings and sculptures from the 15th to the 18th century. The collection, initially formed by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 17th century, preserves masterpieces by Antonello da Messina, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, Tiziano, Correggio, Caravaggio, and splendid sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Canova. In 1607 the Pope had Scipione assigned 107 paintings confiscated from the painter Giuseppe Cesari, known as the Cavalier d’Arpino. The following year was the clandestine removal from the Baglioni Chapel in the church of San Francesco in Perugia and the transport to Rome of the Deposition by Raphael, assigned to Cardinal Scipione. In 1682 part of the legacy of Olimpia Aldobrandini merged, which included works from the collection of Cardinal Salviati and Lucrezia d’Este, in the Borghese collection. In 1827 Camillo Borghese bought the important Danae del Correggio in Paris.
We hope that this article will help you to travel to Italy. Don’t forget to purchase your tickets from Rome Tour Tickets to see famous museums, art and cultural galleries in Italy.
