Palace of the Museums

The headquarters of all the museum institutes of Modena

A few minutes' walk from the Duomo and Piazza XX Settembre is the Palazzo dei Musei di Modena, a building built between 1764 and 1771 by Duke Francesco III d'Este for a project by Pietro Termanini.

Here is where the ancient Augustinian Convent once stood, destined as a place of shelter for the poor. Later on, Duke Ercole III d'Este transformed it into a Hotel of the Arts, which was occupied by Napoleonic troops before becoming an important cultural centre that brings together several institutes in the city. Today, here is where the Estense University Library and the Estense Gallery are located, the latter which exhibits drawings, bronzes, ceramics, musical instruments and medals from the Este collection, along with paintings from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, including works from the Flemish school, by Correggio and Velázquez.

Here is also where the Estense Lapidary Museum is located, with its gallery of monuments dedicated to the Modena notables, as well as the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Modena, the Giuseppe Graziosi Gipsoteca, the Roman Lapidary of the Civic Museum, the Poletti Civic Library of Art, which houses over 85 thousand volumes and the Civic Museum of Modena, the result of the excavations carried out in the territory and in the subsoil of the city as a testimony to the splendid Roman colony of Mutina. In the Palace there is also a cafeteria and an educational workshop, where some research and experimentation of various artistic and artisan techniques are carried out.