Description
Palazzo Magno is the seat of the Province of Campobasso, on Via Roma: a 19th-century bourgeois villa with a sky-blue facade that, along its stairs and corridors, keeps a small collection of Molise art and history.
The most precious piece is a 1592 painting by Gianmaria Felice, The Peace between the Crusaders and the Trinitarians. It shows the reconciliation between the city's two rival confraternities, a key episode in Campobasso's history.
Then there are the uniforms and weapons of Gabriele Pepe, a Molise intellectual and patriot of the Risorgimento, and an old tricolor flag with Garibaldi's portrait, in the president's room.
Amedeo Trivisonno signed the large full-length portrait of King Victor Emmanuel III, from 1939. Closer to our time is the Divine Comedy series by Antonio Pettinicchi, a painter from Molise: canvases in strong colors where Dante's damned and blessed have the faces of today.
His Paradise, the painter wrote, welcomes "emigrants, farmers, cripples, the sick", musicians, poets and saints: those who had very little and stood firm to the end.
The atrium often hosts photography and art exhibitions, and from there the route climbs the grand staircase to the corridors of the upper floors, among large, bright rooms and period furniture.
The building began as the summer residence of the De Tilla family from Naples. It is named after Mercurio Magno, who bought it and kept it until 1936, when it passed to the Province.
The war gave it unexpected lives. Polish soldiers turned it into a hospital and a morgue, and in 1944 the Italian military engineers held the first course for mine clearers here. The Province took the building back in 1946.
In 2012 the Province opened its doors to residents and visitors. Enlarged several times, the building got back the original blue of its facade in the 1980s.
The most precious piece is a 1592 painting by Gianmaria Felice, The Peace between the Crusaders and the Trinitarians. It shows the reconciliation between the city's two rival confraternities, a key episode in Campobasso's history.
Then there are the uniforms and weapons of Gabriele Pepe, a Molise intellectual and patriot of the Risorgimento, and an old tricolor flag with Garibaldi's portrait, in the president's room.
Amedeo Trivisonno signed the large full-length portrait of King Victor Emmanuel III, from 1939. Closer to our time is the Divine Comedy series by Antonio Pettinicchi, a painter from Molise: canvases in strong colors where Dante's damned and blessed have the faces of today.
His Paradise, the painter wrote, welcomes "emigrants, farmers, cripples, the sick", musicians, poets and saints: those who had very little and stood firm to the end.
The atrium often hosts photography and art exhibitions, and from there the route climbs the grand staircase to the corridors of the upper floors, among large, bright rooms and period furniture.
The building began as the summer residence of the De Tilla family from Naples. It is named after Mercurio Magno, who bought it and kept it until 1936, when it passed to the Province.
The war gave it unexpected lives. Polish soldiers turned it into a hospital and a morgue, and in 1944 the Italian military engineers held the first course for mine clearers here. The Province took the building back in 1946.
In 2012 the Province opened its doors to residents and visitors. Enlarged several times, the building got back the original blue of its facade in the 1980s.