Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri

A collector-prince saved a 15th-century palace by moving its façade twenty metres back, then filled it with Neapolitan painting, arms, ceramics and his family's memory. Behind the cathedral's street front, the Filangieri museum remains what he intended: a house of art given to the whole city.

Why it matters

Naples has many civic museums, but only this one is a 19th-century collector's project preserved whole. Its creator, Gaetano Filangieri, prince of Satriano and son of the Bourbon general and war minister Carlo Filangieri, gathered paintings, sculpture, weapons, ceramics, porcelain and books around the memory of his family — including the manuscript legacy of his grandfather, the Enlightenment jurist Gaetano Filangieri, author of La Scienza della Legislazione. When the Risanamento redevelopment cut a wider Via Duomo through the district, the prince bought the endangered Quattrocento Palazzo Como, had its façade set back about twenty metres, and gave the palace to the city as a museum home. Inaugurated in 1881, the institution still belongs to the municipality and keeps that founding spirit: an aristocrat's collection turned into a public teaching collection.

What to notice

The Sala Carlo Filangieri, dedicated to the founder's father, holds eighteenth- and nineteenth-century weapons and armour from China, Japan and Turkey, along with sculpture, ceramics and paintings. Vault mosaics were produced by the Salviati workshop of Venice; Tito Angelini's marble bust of the general is also present. The Sala Agata, named for Agata Moncada di Paternò, has a maiolica floor bearing the Filangieri emblem, artistically directed by Filippo Palizzi and made with Giovanni Tesorone, beneath an iron-and-glass skylight by the Cottrau firm. Canvases include works by Luca Giordano, Solimena, Andrea Vaccaro, Jusepe de Ribera, Mattia Preti, Battistello Caracciolo and Boucher; porcelain and biscuit figures range from Meissen to the Capodimonte factory. The library contains about eight thousand volumes, family relics, coins and medals, and works by Viollet-le-Duc, Cavalcaselle and Morelli.

Context and history

Palazzo Como is itself the museum's first exhibit. Built in the 15th century, it is one of the rare surviving Renaissance palaces of Naples, sold in 1587 to the neighbouring monastery of San Severo al Pendino and absorbed for centuries into conventual use. The 19th-century street works that threatened it also produced its rescue: rather than lose the palace, the prince acquired it and financed the extraordinary operation that withdrew its front about twenty metres, a building quietly relocated in the name of progress. The museum opened in this setting in the early 1880s and passed to civic administration as the Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri. After a long restoration, rooms were reopened in stages.