Description
The Museo Sartorio is a stately late 18th-century villa in the centre of Trieste, still furnished as it was when the family's last heir lived there. Period furniture, ceramics, paintings and a 14th-century masterpiece tell the life of Trieste's upper middle class in the 19th century.
The jewel of the collection is the Triptych of Santa Chiara, painted in 1328 by Paolo and Marco Veneziano: the masterpiece of 14th-century painting in Trieste. Alongside it is a collection of drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo, an important one.
The rooms with their original furnishings show how people lived in a Trieste villa at the end of the 19th century, among porcelain, maiolica and ceramics. There is also a painting by Giambattista Pittoni.
The visit continues outside the villa. The old stables house the picture gallery, with more than a thousand paintings from the civic collections. The former carriage house has become a gallery of plaster casts and sculpture, with about six hundred works from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The basements display applied arts and jewellery, together with the remains of a Roman domus from the 1st century AD, uncovered during the restoration work. The Rusconi-Opuich collection is rich too, about 2,500 pieces from ancient art to the 20th century.
The villa has had more than one life. Before the Sartorios it belonged to the Faraon family, merchants from Alexandria in Egypt. The Sartorios, originally from Sanremo, came to Trieste in 1775 to open a trading branch, and Pietro Sartorio bought the house.
The last heir, Baroness Anna Segrè Sartorio, left the villa and all its furnishings to the city, on condition that it become a public museum. The museum opened in part in 1949 and in full in 1954, and was restored and reopened at the end of 2006.
After the Second World War the villa was the Allied headquarters. On the tiles and walls you can still see the marks of the openings made for telephone and electricity cables.
The jewel of the collection is the Triptych of Santa Chiara, painted in 1328 by Paolo and Marco Veneziano: the masterpiece of 14th-century painting in Trieste. Alongside it is a collection of drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo, an important one.
The rooms with their original furnishings show how people lived in a Trieste villa at the end of the 19th century, among porcelain, maiolica and ceramics. There is also a painting by Giambattista Pittoni.
The visit continues outside the villa. The old stables house the picture gallery, with more than a thousand paintings from the civic collections. The former carriage house has become a gallery of plaster casts and sculpture, with about six hundred works from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The basements display applied arts and jewellery, together with the remains of a Roman domus from the 1st century AD, uncovered during the restoration work. The Rusconi-Opuich collection is rich too, about 2,500 pieces from ancient art to the 20th century.
The villa has had more than one life. Before the Sartorios it belonged to the Faraon family, merchants from Alexandria in Egypt. The Sartorios, originally from Sanremo, came to Trieste in 1775 to open a trading branch, and Pietro Sartorio bought the house.
The last heir, Baroness Anna Segrè Sartorio, left the villa and all its furnishings to the city, on condition that it become a public museum. The museum opened in part in 1949 and in full in 1954, and was restored and reopened at the end of 2006.
After the Second World War the villa was the Allied headquarters. On the tiles and walls you can still see the marks of the openings made for telephone and electricity cables.