Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese

Piacenza's Civic Museums occupy the unfinished Farnese palace, bringing together archaeology, paintings, decorative arts, carriages and Risorgimento collections. Highlights include Sandro Botticelli's Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist and the bronze Etruscan Liver, a model used in divination.

Why it matters

The museums join the city's collections with the imposing palace the Farnese dukes left incomplete. The Pinacoteca's Botticelli tondo, painted between 1483 and 1487, depicts the Madonna adoring the Child with the young John the Baptist. The archaeological galleries display the Fegato Etrusco di Piacenza, a bronze sheep's liver inscribed for divination around the second century BCE, offering a rare witness to Etruscan religious practice.

What to notice

The archaeological collections occupy fifteen themed rooms in the palace cellars, with prehistoric and protohistoric material extending into the neighbouring Cittadella Viscontea and a Roman section added in June 2021. The Pinacoteca pairs the Botticelli with Ilario Spolverini's Fasti Farnesiani and paintings by G. E. Draghi and Sebastiano Ricci. The Museo Civico includes maiolica and glass, medieval sculpture, arms and late-Gothic Tuscan panels from the Rizzi Vaccari bequest. The carriage collection includes a gala berlin built around 1750 and a Hansom cab from 1875–80, donated by Count Silvestro Brondelli di Brondello in 1948. Documents in the Risorgimento rooms follow the events of 1848–49 and 1859–61, including the plebiscite associated with Piacenza's title of Primogenita.

Context and history

The proposal to place Piacenza's collections in the palace dates to 1909 and was revived in 1926. A restoration body formed in 1965 organised its recovery; the first public section, including the Risorgimento museum, opened in 1988, and the Pinacoteca followed in autumn 1997. The glass and ceramics display was renewed in 2019, and the Roman archaeological section opened in 2021. The museums continue to develop within a palace that was never completed to its original design.