San Colombano - Collezione Tagliavini

San Colombano brings together a historic church complex and the Tagliavini Collection of more than ninety musical instruments, including clavichords, spinets, harpsichords and organs. Nearly all remain playable. Beneath the former church, a medieval crypt preserves a thirteenth-century burial and a Crucifixion mural attributed to Giunta Pisano.

Why it matters

Bologna's musical heritage includes not only opera and conservatory traditions but also the craft of instrument making. Assembled over several decades by Bolognese organist and scholar Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, the collection began in 1969 with a sixteenth-century spinet and a three-register harpsichord made in 1679 by Giovanni Battista Giusti of Lucca. The Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna acquired the complex in 2005, restored it, and reopened it as a museum in 2010. Its instruments now share space with a site whose religious and architectural history reaches back to the early medieval period.

What to notice

Among the collection's notable instruments are the 1679 Giusti harpsichord, a sixteenth-century Neapolitan spinet from the Cenci Bolognetti family, and a harpsichord made in 1685 by Mattia De Gand, a Flemish maker working in Rome. The De Gand instrument can transpose by a tone, a feature revealed during its restoration. The collection also includes pianofortes, wind and folk instruments, and automatic instruments, alongside its keyboard instruments.

The complex's art is part of the experience too. The crypt holds a thirteenth-century burial and a Crucifixion mural attributed to Giunta Pisano, uncovered during restoration. In the oratory, Passion scenes painted by pupils of the Carracci form the cycle known as the “Gloriosa gara,” or “Glorious Contest.”

Context and history

The church is traditionally dated to around 616, when Bishop Pietro I is said to have built it over an earlier monumental structure. Religious orders held the complex until the Napoleonic suppressions. The chapel of the Madonna dell'Orazione was added in 1917 around an image of the Virgin attributed to the Bolognese painter Lippo di Dalmasio.

Restoration following the foundation's 2005 acquisition brought the medieval crypt and its mural to light. The complex reopened in 2010 to house the Tagliavini donation. Its scholarly holdings include the Oscar Mischiati library, a collection of about fifteen thousand items focused on organ music and instrument history.