Piacenza, Farnese Segreto: unprecedented tour of usually inaccessible rooms and works from the deposits

From September 24, 2021, the experiential exhibition Farnese Segreto in the rooms of Palazzo Farnese kicks off: an unprecedented tour inside the majestic Vignola building, making accessible rooms hitherto unvisited in the usual guided tours and displaying works kept in the museum’s storerooms.

The guided tour held by professional tour guides will last about an hour and a half.

Starting from the Carriage Museum in the basement, you will ascend via a long spiral staircase to the top floor of the building, the current home of the State Archives. From there you will descend to the Ducal Chapel, visible from the right choir loft, which is not normally accessible, and to the Pinacoteca, located in theAppartamento Dorato, which features vaults frescoed by artists such as Andrea Seghizzi and Giovanni Battista Caccioli. Two mezzanines, exceptionally open to the public, will be accessed from the Pinacoteca. In the upper one, located between the piano nobile and the top floor, originally intended as an alcove for the damsels, one can admire the Storie Zefiro e Flora painted between 1710 and 1711 by the Florentine Sebastiano Galeotti.

Going down instead to the mezzanine, between the piano nobile and the mezzanine floor, one can admire the art of a Flemish artist who made his fortune in Piacenza: Robert De Longe. Seven ovals, donated to the museum in 1961 by Carlo Anguissola but too long kept in storage, will be on view here. De Longe, who died the year before Galeotti’s arrival in the city, made a name for himself in the Piacenza area thanks to the refinement of his works, so much so that he had the privilege of seeing his name in all the major pictorial commissions of the late 17th and early 18th centuries between Cremona, Monticelli d’Ongina, Lodi and Piacenza.

Piacenza, Farnese Segreto: unprecedented tour of usually inaccessible rooms and works from the deposits

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