Museo Nazionale di Matera Palazzo Lanfranchi

On Piazzetta Giovanni Pascoli stands Palazzo Lanfranchi, built in 1668-1672 as a diocesan seminary and now Matera's state gallery. Inside hang the medieval and modern art of Basilicata, from Carlo Levi's Lucania '61 and his Lucanian canvases to Neapolitan Seicento painting from the d'Errico collection, in the most representative Baroque palace of the city.

Why it matters

The municipal tourism portal calls it the finest example of seventeenth-century architecture in Matera, and the state made it the picture gallery of Basilicata. Since its inauguration on 6 May 2003, after years of restoration, the palace has held the national collection of medieval and modern art, and since the 2019-2024 reform it has been one of the seats of the Musei nazionali di Matera. For a traveller, this is where the Sassi city meets its painters: the rooms gather the images that the twentieth century made of Lucania, above all Carlo Levi's, side by side with the devotional and collecting traditions that shaped the region's taste from the Middle Ages to the Neapolitan eighteenth century.

What to notice

Begin with the Levi room on the ground floor and the painting Lucania '61, made for the 1961 Turin exhibition of the Italian regions, then follow the artist's Lucanian figures through the contemporary section: portraits and peasant faces from the 1930s, Notturno ad Aliano, The Clock - Owl of 1950, works on loan from the Fondazione Carlo Levi of Rome. Luigi Guerricchio, a Matera painter of the same century, continues the local thread. The Collezionismo section presents seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting from the Camillo d'Errico collection of Palazzo San Gervasio, with canvases of the Neapolitan school and beyond, from Massimo Stanzione and Aniello Falcone to Abraham Brueghel's still lifes, and a San Francesco in preghiera by Jusepe de Ribera. Earlier, look for the Annunciazione by Altobello Persio, painted between 1524 and 1538, a sculpture of San Sebastiano attributed to Giovanni da Nola, and panels of frescoes detached from the rupestrian churches of the Matera countryside.

Context and history

Bishop Vincenzo Lanfranchi built the palace between 1668 and 1672 as a seminary, following the directions of the Council of Trent on the training of clergy, funded by bequests from the mayor Marco Malvindi and by the bishop's own family. Two enlargements, in 1776 and 1822, answered the growing number of seminarians. In 1864 the building passed to the town's classical lyceum, where the young Giovanni Pascoli taught early in his career; the square in front carries his name. The Soprintendenza for artistic heritage moved into the palace in 1979, and the restoration completed in 2003 turned it into the national gallery it remains, now under the single institute that runs Matera's state museums. The building therefore carries four lives in three centuries: seminary, school, superintendency, museum.