Montevarchi
The Fortress for sculpture
A gray stone castle, in the center of a large and scenic square, is what makes the town of Montevarchi unique for its original urban layout in the Arezzo area, at the gates of Chianti.
The castle houses hundreds of sculptures created between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The permanent collection on display, entirely restored, consists of over half a thousand works including bronzes, marbles, plaster casts, terracotta and drawings, by Tuscan and Italian artists arrived in Montevarchi thanks to donations from private individuals. In dedicated rooms, the visitor can thus admire the most important creations of artists such as Michelangelo Monti, Timo Bortolotti, Arturo Stagliano, Alberto Giacomasso, Mentore Maltoni, Valmore Gemignani, Odo Franceschi, Mario Bini, Francesco Falcone, Quinto Ghermandi, Diana Baylon, Florence Poggi and Donatella (Dodi) Bortolotti. Today all these works are the heritage of the Arezzo institution and can be admired together with the sculptures of artists from Montevarchi such as Pietro Guerri, Elio Galassi and Ernesto Galeffi, formerly owned by the municipality.
The educational offer is wide and varied for both schools – from nursery school to secondary school grade – and children with their families who are offered creative workshops, games, theatre performances as well as Easter, September and Christmas campuses.
With a view to making the Museum more and more “accessible”, Il Cassero has developed a tactile path including blind, visually impaired and sighted people, has organized “art therapy” meetings for people with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers as part of the project “Bartolea Caffè” of the Municipality of Montevarchi and has proposed initiatives dedicated to “New Citizens” in the belief that culture is an essential element in the construction of individual and collective identity.
CONTACTS
The Cassero for Italian sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Via Trieste, 1 52025 Montevarchi (AR)
Phone: 055 9108272
Phone: 055 9108274
Museum of Sacred Art
In the historic center of Montevarchi, next to the Collegiate Church of San Lorenzo, the evocative Museum of Sacred Art houses sculptures, frescoes, objects of fine goldsmithing, sacred furnishings, reliquaries and illuminated manuscripts, as well as important glazed terracotta of Della Robbia.
Among the works preserved in the Museum, some of them stand out for historical and artistic importance and for the uniqueness of the find: liturgical objects commissioned by the local Fraternity of the Holy Milk, established in the fifteenth century as a result of the gift by Count Guido Guerra of the relic that belonged to the emperor of Constantinople and later to the King of France Louis IX.
Another find of inestimable beauty is the Tempietto Della Robbia, rebuilt as it appeared inside the Church before being dismantled at the beginning of the 18th century, which housed the relic of the Madonna’s milk.
In addition, the museum is enriched with the presence of the Frieze showing Count Guido Guerra who gives the relic to the clergy (dated 1495-1500). This scene represented by Andrea della Robbia tells the moment of the gift to the prior of San Lorenzo of the Sacred relic of the Milk of the Madonna,
obtained by Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis
IX, grateful for the support given by Count Guido Guerra, feudal lord of Montevarchi, in the battle of Benevento (1266).
Among the numerous liturgical objects, it is worth mentioning the Astile Cross of the Florentine goldsmith Piero di Martino Spigliati (16th century) in embossed and chiseled silver and the Shrine of the Holy Milk, in the shape of a small temple, in
carved ebony wood with decorations of silver and gilded copper, by Michele Genovini (1626-1669).
The museum also houses the Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints, a fresco detached from the church of S. Andrea in Cennano and attributed to Luberto da Montevarchi (1460-1522), an artist who trained in the circle of Perugino, his collaborator at the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, who worked a lot in Valdarno.
INFORMATION
Opening hours
Thursday 10.00-12.00 am
Saturday and Sunday 10.00-12.00 am / 4.00-6.00 pm
CONTACTS
Museum of the Collegiate Church of San Lorenzo
rue Isidoro Del Lungo, 4 52025 Montevarchi (Ar)
Phone: 055980468
E-mail: museo.artesacrasanlorenzo@gmail.com
Palaeontological Museum
The Palaeontological Museum of Montevarchi is one of the oldest in Italy and was opened to the public for the first time in 1829. For two centuries it has collected and documented the climatic and environmental variations that have accompanied the natural history of the Valdarno.
In the new rooms, reopened in 2014, we can observe the reconstructions of the environment and the remains of the fauna (elephants, hippopotami, giant hyenas, canids, equids, tapirs, bovids…) that used to populate the Upper Valdarno as far back as 3 million years ago.
Thanks to a chronological path, a journey is made from the most ancient phase, characterised by high sequoia forests with a hot-humid climate, continuing through the period of glaciation
(2,500,000 years ago) and the great Pleistocene lake, up to the first human presence (200,000 years ago) attested by the world’s oldest “handled arrowhead”..
Since 2016, the Palaeontology Section has also been joined by the “Tracchi” Archaeology Section,
which provides an in-depth look at the Etruscan and Roman presence in Valdarno.
The Palaeontological Museum is housed in a 14th-century Franciscan convent, whose architecture still remains in the
traces of internal decorations and in the Renaissance cloister.
The Museum has a bookshop where it is possible to buy publications, educational games and personalised and themed gadgets.
INFORMATION
Opening hours
Winter (1 September – 31 May):
Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 am-1.00 pm / 3.00-6.00 pm (until 7.00 on the fourth
Sunday of the month)
Summer (1 June – 31 August):
Thursdays: 10.00 am- 7.00 pm
Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 am.-1.00 pm. / 4.00 pm.-7.00 pm.
www.museopaleontologicomontevarchi.it
CONTACTS
Paleontological Museum Montevarchi
Via Poggio Bracciolini, 36/40, 52025 Montevarchi (AR)
Phone:055 981227
Phone:055 981812
E-mail: paleo@accademiadelpoggio.it