Civico Museo Sartorio

The Civic Museum Sartorio preserves the interiors of an eighteenth-century Trieste merchant villa alongside works by Giambattista Tiepolo and a fourteenth-century triptych.

Why it matters

The villa belonged to a merchant family from Sanremo that settled in Trieste in the early nineteenth century. In 1947, the family's last heir, Anna, donated the house and collections to the city on condition that the villa become a museum. Its rooms preserve a bourgeois domestic interior alongside a significant art collection, including 254 drawings by Tiepolo.

What to notice

The villa's central salons connect rooms arranged across several floors. Highlights include two rooms of Tiepolo drawings, the family portrait gallery, a neo-Gothic room and the bedroom used by Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Aosta. The collection also includes the fourteenth-century Trittico di Santa Chiara, furniture, silver, jewellery, porcelain, paintings and nineteenth- and twentieth-century sculpture. Remains of a Roman domus survive beneath the building.

Context and history

The Sartorio family maintained an eighteenth-century plan while adding neoclassical elements and nineteenth-century furnishings. The 1947 donation transformed the private residence into civic heritage. Restoration campaigns in recent decades revealed the Roman domus beneath the basement and renewed the museum's presentation of the villa and its collections.