Museo della Bambola e del Giocattolo

Upstairs in a medieval fortress, a collection of more than 1,400 dolls fills twelve rooms and traces the history of childhood objects. Founded in 1988 by Princess Bona Borromeo Arese, the museum follows toy-making from hand craft to industry, ending with a Barbie astronaut.

Why it matters

The collection is organised as a history of manufacturing and play. The visitor route begins with wooden and papier-mâché figures shaped by hand, moves through English and German wax dolls, then porcelain and bisque heads with wardrobes and accessories, and finishes with mass-produced cloth, felt, metal and vinyl toys of the twentieth century. Among its notable figures, a Shirley Temple doll sits near a Lilli figure, the German doll widely seen as the forerunner of Barbie. The museum occupies the Visconti and Borromeo wing and the old oratory of the Rocca.

What to notice

Three sections illustrate the range of the collection. The core Borromeo collection fills twelve rooms in the Ala Viscontea e Borromea and the oratory, where cases of bisque-headed ladies carry miniature shoes, combs, travel trunks and tea services, including the makers’ marks on the backs of porcelain heads. In the former stables, a monothematic display gathers dolls and toys from non-European cultures, a deliberate counterpoint to the European salon dolls elsewhere. On the first floor, three rooms hold mechanical automata acquired from the Petit Musée du Costume in Tours, France, including fashion figures transformed into mechanical automata. The board-game cabinets hold puzzles, miniature tea sets and period tombolas, as well as unusual sets such as a military strategy game and a fishing game.

Context and history

The museum opened in 1988 on the initiative of Princess Bona Borromeo Arese, who gathered the family collection inside the fortress her family has owned since the fifteenth century. Donations have enlarged the core collection over time. Among its later additions is a Barbie depicting astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, displayed with post-war vinyl figures. Professor Marco Tosa has curated catalogues accompanying the collection. The collection is housed within the fortress’s Visconti and Borromeo wing.