The Civic Museums of Pavia (Musei Civici di Pavia) are a number of museums in Pavia, Lombardy, northern Italy. They are housed in the Castello Visconteo, or Visconti Castle, built in 1360 by Galeazzo II Visconti, soon after taking the city, a free city-state until then. The credited architect is Bartolino da Novara. The castle used to be the main residence of the Visconti family, while the political capital of the state was Milan. North of the castle a wide park was enclosed, also including the Certosa of Pavia, founded 1396 according to a vow of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, meant to be a sort of private chapel of the Visconti dynasty. The Battle of Pavia (1525), climax of the Italian Wars, took place inside the castle park.
The Civic Museums of Pavia include the Pinacoteca Malaspina, Museo Archeologico and Sala Longobarda, Sezioni Medioevale e Rinascimentale Quadreria dell’800 (Collezione Morone), Museo del Risorgimento, Museo Robecchi Bricchetti, and the Cripta di Sant’Eusebio.
History
The museum was built by the will of the Marquis Luigi Malaspina di Sannazzaro, an enlightened artist (1754/1835), who donated his art collections to the municipality on his death. The collection, which over time was enriched by numerous donations, was initially housed in the Malaspina Palace and was moved to the castle only in 1951.
Collections
The archaeological collection includes materials found by chance during agricultural or building works; the museum has come mainly from private collecting (Giuletti, Reale collection, etc.). The arcades on the ground floor of the castle house the Lapidarium made up of stelae, sarcophagi, funerary and votive altars, epigraphs, capitals, colonnems and Roman milestones.
Archaeological Museum and Longobard Room
The first room is dedicated to the territory of Ticinum (this was the ancient name of Pavia) in Roman times and, among other finds, it exhibits a sepulchral area, made up of brick cremation tombs and a sepulchral stone, of the 1st century A.D. found in Casteggio. The room also houses the finds from the Celtic necropolis found in 1957 in Santa Cristina e Bissone, whose grave goods date back to the 2nd century B.C. they are characterized by the presence of stylistically traditional celtic objects combined with typically Roman products, such as black-glazed Ware. Not otherwise, the grave goods from the 1st century B.C. tomb found in Pavia it is at the same time Celtic (in the ceramics and brooches) and Roman (in the brick elements of the box and in the clay unguentarium). These are evidence of the progressive penetration of Roman culture into the Celtic Cisalpine world. Also from the same period dates back to a piece of great interest: a silver cup which on the rim bears an inscription formed by a Ligurian name followed by an indication of Roman weight measurements found near Zerbo in a group of "Gallo-Roman" tombs cremation and dated to the 2nd century B.C.
In the second room is exhibited the Egyptian collection, donated by the Marquis Malaspina di Sannazzaro (who bought it from Giuseppe Nizzoli, chancellor of the Austrian consulate in Alexandria between 1818 and 1828), consisting of about 150 artifacts. The Egyptian collection is not the only section of the museum containing materials not coming from the Pavia area: we only remember the collection of Phoenician-Punic ceramics (rarely found in Italian museums outside Sardinia) left by Francesco Reale in 1892 or the collection of Italiot and Greek vases that came to the museum through 19th-century Pavese collectors.
Also in the same room is the collection of Roman glass, probably the most important in northern Italy, in which there are pieces of the highest quality and rarity, such as the dark blue glass kantharos from Frascarolo and the cup of Ennion. the Roman glass in the museum stands out for its quality and typological variety. In the collection, ascribable in the majority of the pieces to the 1st and 2nd century AD, the most diverse processing techniques are testified