Museo "Casa del Podestà"
The "Casa del Podestà" building was erected towards the mid fifteenth century as the residence of the representative of the Republic of Venice in Lonato, a territory which was under Venetian domination for almost 350 years.
The House of the Podestà (or chief magistrate) belonged to Venice until the Treaty of Campoformio in 1797, when it became Austrian propriety and was turned into a military barracks.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the building passed at the ends at the Town Hall of Lonato which took not interested in it, using it as poorhouse for the town poorest families.
In 1906 the Liberal deputy Ugo Da Como bought it at a public auction and submitted it to a radical restoration based on the historicist recovery of the original style: appointing Antonio Tagliaferri, the most important Brescia architect of the period, as supervisor of the works.
The Ugo Da Como’s purpose was to restore the deserved status to the Venetian building by providing it with a series of suitable furnishings that would make it a house-museum to live in, according to a widespread fashion between the 19th and 20th centuries.
The house was inhabited until 1941 by Ugo Da Como who died in Lonato and by his wife Maria Glisenti who died in 1944. The identity of this bourgeois residence has remained unchanged until today.
The Casa del Podestà is a real “library house” which houses a collection of about 50,000 volumes. It can be counted among the most important private collections in northern Italy.
The museum is part of a monumental complex of extraordinary beauty, dominated by the great Visconti-Venetian fortress.
Opening time
Guided visit to the Museum "Casa del Podestà":
For the museum booking is required by telephone (+39 030 9130060 or by website https://retemusei.movingminds.net/fondazione-ugo-da-como )
For more information: www.fondazioneugodacomo.it