Piazzola sul Brenta

Greek Roman Lapidary Museum at Piazzola sul Brenta

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The Greek Roman Lapidary Museum at Piazzola sul Brenta is situated in the eastern colonnade of Villa Contarini and contains the remains of an ancient collection started by Antonio Nani. Read More
Greek Roman Lapidary Museum at Piazzola sul Brenta
The Greek Roman Lapidary Museum at Piazzola sul Brenta is situated in the eastern colonnade of Villa Contarini and contains the remains of an ancient collection started by Antonio Nani in the early 18th century, and continued by his sons Bernardo and Giacomo. The collection, resulting form the passion of the Nani family, included statues, coins and especially a great number of Greek and Latin historic, votive, and honorary inscriptions and epitaphs. They were all collected during the offices of Antonio as Provveditore generale della Serenissima (General Superintendant of the Republic of Venice) in Morea, and of Giacomo, first as Almirante delle Navi, and then as Provveditore da Mar della Serenissima nel Levante (Sea Superintendant of the Republic of Venice in the East), in Istria, Dalmatia, in the Ionian isles an the East in general, all regions with which Venice had relationships.

Giacomo’s death one month before the fall of the Republic (1797) marks the end of the collection, which was entirely dispersed and sold by his son Antonio in 1822. The collection was thus dispersed in Europe and in the United States. Pietro Businello, a friend of the family, bought the most sizeable part of it, consisting of about a hundred inscriptions and several statues, for his country house in Legnaro, Padua. In 1847, after his death, his heirs, the Pagani family, sold the collection in different consecutive times, further dispersing it. Most of the statues arrived to various museums in Saint Petersburg, Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Bologna, and Baltimore; a group of thirty-seven inscriptions, nine of which are in Greek and twenty-eight in Latin, was bought by the Camerini family and moved to their house in Piazzola, where they are still kept.

Info
Via Luigi Camerini 1, Piazzola sul Brenta (PD)
Tel +39 049 8778272
Fax +39 049 8778275
[email protected]
www.villacontarini.eu