Museo Morpurgo

The Museo Morpurgo preserves the nineteenth-century interior of an apartment in Palazzo Morpurgo, a building designed by Giovanni Berlam in 1875. Located on the second floor, the roughly 600-square-metre residence retains its original furnishings and decorative scheme, offering a record of domestic life among Trieste’s entrepreneurial bourgeoisie.

Why it matters

The apartment belonged to the Morpurgo de Nilma family. In the mid-twentieth century, Mario Morpurgo de Nilma donated it, with its furnishings and artworks, to the Comune di Trieste for use as a museum. The municipal cultural catalogue describes the apartment as a rare example of a nineteenth-century interior preserved without later rearrangement.

What to notice

The rooms follow a long corridor and include a music salon, dining room with its original porcelain, fumoir, ladies’ sitting room, neo-Boulle corner salon, two bedrooms and service rooms. Their decoration reflects the eclectic taste of the second half of the nineteenth century, with inlaid floors, plaster cornices and French lace curtains. The furnishings and connected rooms preserve the scale and arrangement of a private residence.

Context and history

Palazzo Morpurgo was built in 1875 to Giovanni Berlam’s design for Carlo Marco and Giacomo Morpurgo. The city later received the apartment and its contents as a donation from Mario Morpurgo de Nilma and established the house museum. The interiors document the material culture of Trieste’s nineteenth-century bourgeois households.