Museo Civico Pier Alessandro Garda

Ivrea's civic museum reopened in 2014 after decades of closure, and its three-pronged collection still surprises visitors: archaeological finds from the Canavese going back to the Neolithic, a refined Japanese and Asian art collection, and a painting bequest running from the Trecento to de Chirico — all inside a former convent on Piazza Ottinetti.

Why it matters

The Museo Civico Pier Alessandro Garda is the place where Ivrea's older histories are kept, complementing the Olivetti-era heritage that made the city famous. Its collections tell three stories at once: the deep local past, from Neolithic tools through the Roman era to the medieval Canavese; the cosmopolitan nineteenth century, when an Ivrea lawyer who never visited Japan assembled one of Piedmont's notable Japanese collections during the age of japonisme; and the tastes of twentieth-century collectors, whose bequest brought early Italian paintings and modern works to the city. Reopened in January 2014 after nearly three decades closed, the museum is a well-lit, modernly installed institution rather than a dusty civic attic, and its temporary exhibitions connect the collections with the city's cultural life.

What to notice

Three collections structure the visit. The archaeological collection documents the Ivrea area from the Neolithic through to the late medieval period; among its pieces the "stele del gromatico", tied to Roman land surveying, is a favourite talking point. The Oriental collection centres on the more than seven hundred Japanese works, many from the Edo and early Meiji periods, gathered by Pier Alessandro Garda, joined by Chinese and other Asian objects from the Perrone collection; the Asian holdings form a distinct part of the collection. The Guelpa-Croff bequest of paintings is the art-historical anchor, with works attributed to Giovanni del Biondo, Neri di Bicci, Bergognone, the Carracci, Giorgio de Chirico and Pietro Annigoni. The exhibition programme has included subjects ranging from Japanese prints to contemporary drawing.

Context and history

The museum takes its name from Pier Alessandro Garda, the nineteenth-century Ivrea collector whose Japanese holdings, formed in the japonisme period, became the core of the Oriental collection — a bequest of 1874, the legacy of a traveller manqué who saw Japan entirely through objects. The civic institution grew around such bequests, adding the archaeological material of the Canavese and the painting collection given to Ivrea through Lucia Guelpa's bequest in memory of the Croff family, whose story began with a 1946 road accident. After a long closure lasting almost three decades, the museum was inaugurated anew on 31 January 2014 in the premises on Piazza Ottinetti, in the shadow of the Duomo. Since reopening, it has acted as a hub of Ivrea's civic cultural system, with joint initiatives involving the castle and the city's other museums.