Museo Civico del Castello di Conegliano

The Civic Museum of the Castle of Conegliano occupies the Campana tower, the last surviving tower of the Rocca di Castelvecchio. Its collections bring together local paintings, sculpture, civic objects and archaeological finds, from prehistory to the Roman period.

Why it matters

The idea of a municipal museum dates to 1868. The collections moved into the tower in 1946, and director Alfredo De Mas, appointed in 1952, developed its art collection. The historic building is part of the museum’s story: it was a keep of the rocca and later served as the town’s bell tower.

What to notice

The pinacoteca and lapidary include frescoes and inscriptions rescued from local churches and convents, among them a stone lion defaced by French troops in 1797. The collection includes organ shutters attributed to the workshop of Giambattista Cima da Conegliano, painted between 1510 and 1517; Jacopo Palma il Giovane’s “Consegna delle chiavi a San Pietro” (1614–1616); a penitent Saint Jerome attributed to Jusepe de Ribera; and a fresco fragment by Pordenone dated 1514. The Sala del Camino contains armour and six standard weights of the Venetian Republic. On the upper floor, the archaeological collection includes a saddle quern about six thousand years old and a first-century BC funerary stele from Campolongo.

Context and history

Antonio Tocchio oversaw the collections after they moved to the tower in 1946. The building’s small arched windows date to a restoration in 1467; after the bell chamber collapsed in 1491, it was rebuilt. The tower reached its present height in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Ghibelline merlons were added. Their medieval appearance is a romantic reconstruction rather than evidence of an original medieval crown. The archaeological section opened in 1994.