Museo Davia Bargellini

Bologna's Davia Bargellini Museum combines a historic family picture gallery with decorative arts and popular culture inside a seventeenth-century palace.

Why it matters

The museum preserves the Bargellini family's collection in its historic setting alongside applied arts acquired for the city in the early twentieth century. Its combination of Old Master paintings, decorative objects and a marionette theatre reflects both aristocratic collecting and popular Bolognese culture.

What to notice

Two stone telamons by Gabriele Brunelli and Francesco Agnesini flank the palace portal. The painting gallery includes Vitale da Bologna's 1345 Madonna dei Denti, portraits by Bartolomeo Passerotti and works by Prospero and Lavinia Fontana, Bartolomeo Cesi and the Crespi family. Other holdings include wrought ironwork, ceramics, liturgical textiles and a late-eighteenth-century gala carriage. An eighteenth-century marionette theatre preserves a complete stage setting and its figures.

Context and history

The palace developed for the Bargellini family from the 1610s; its monumental facade was built from 1638, and construction was completed in 1658. Vincenzo Bargellini added the staircase around 1730. The property passed by inheritance to the Davia family and later to the charitable Opera Pia. The museum opened in 1924. Its painting gallery preserves the family's quadreria, while applied-arts holdings were acquired for the city around 1920. The current arrangement follows a 1984 reorganization.