Overview
The Civic Museums have been housed since 1936 in the city-owned Palazzo Mosca, former residence of one of Pesaro's most important noble families. The Mosca family, wealthy merchants from Bergamo, arrived in Pesaro in the mid-1500s and soon became part of the city's nobility. Their rapid economic and social rise allowed them to build the suburban Villa Caprile and the palace in the centre still bearing their name today.
Today, the Palazzo is characterised by a façade with an elegant, rusticated portal in the centre and the Mosca family coat of arms mounted above. Beyond the threshold, three large courts appear.
The testamentary bequest of the Marchioness (1885), a great collector of art and ceramics, constitutes a large part of the collection of the Civic Museums. The Mosca collection is in addition to the collection of Renaissance majolica of knight Domenico Mazza acquired by the city in 1857 and the Hercolani Rossini collection acquired in 1883.
The museums are most famous for the grand Pala di Pesaro by Giovanni Bellini, one of the key works in the development of the Venetian Renaissance.
The museum exhibits works from the region and by masters from Marche, Veneto, Tuscany, Emilia and beyond, including Vitale da Bologna, Tintoretto, Ludovico Carracci, Guido Reni, Mattia Preti, and Palma il Giovane (Giudizio Universale), part of the Rossini collection.
Other rooms are dedicated to the ceramics collections, in which 16th-century majolica of local production, especially from Urbino, Pesaro and Urbania (Casteldurante) stand out.
In the entrance courtyard is the Medusa, a late-Art Nouveau work by ceramist Ferruccio Mengaroni.
Photo credit: Regione Marche
