Museo della Battaglia e di Anghiari

The Museo della Battaglia e di Anghiari traces the town's history from prehistoric settlement to the battle fought on 29 June 1440. Its collection includes archaeological finds, armour, images related to Leonardo da Vinci's lost Battle of Anghiari and a contemporary work by Emilio Isgrò.

Why it matters

The Florentine victory at Anghiari in 1440 made the battle a defining episode in the town's history and inspired Leonardo's later commission for a painting in the Hall of the Grand Council in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. The museum brings together objects and artworks that explore the battle, the lost fresco and the wider history of the Valtiberina. Its collections range from prehistoric material to contemporary art.

What to notice

A seventeenth-century engraving by Gérard Edelinck is among the surviving images derived from Leonardo's composition, including the struggle for the standard. Other displays present archaeological material from the surrounding countryside, works by Anghiari-born Divisionist painter Fausto Vagnetti, weapons from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and Emilio Isgrò's 2019 Pacem in Terris, inspired by Pope John XXIII's encyclical. Together, these objects show how the battle's memory has been interpreted through art, military history and the town's archaeological record.

Context and history

On 29 June 1440, Florentine troops fought Milanese forces beneath Anghiari's walls. Leonardo received a commission in 1503 to commemorate the battle in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. His experimental painting technique failed, leaving the work unfinished; later remodelling covered it, and the fresco is now considered lost. Painted copies, engravings and preparatory drawings preserve evidence of Leonardo's composition. Palazzo del Marzocco, where the museum is housed, was assembled in the sixteenth century from two earlier tower houses in the Borghetto, one of Anghiari's oldest quarters. The collection also reflects the town's later firearms industry.