Luigi Marzoli Weapons Museum

In one of the oldest areas of the Castle, the Visconti Keep, there is the "Luigi Marzoli" Weapons Museum, inaugurated in 1988 with a layout by Carlo Scarpa, to house one of the richest European collections of ancient armor and weapons, which tell of the very long Brescia's armory tradition, documenting its technological and artistic evolution between the 15th and 18th centuries.

The Weapons Museum of Brescia was born thanks to the acquisition of the collection of the knight of work Luigi Marzoli, a successful entrepreneur, after whom the Museum is named. Over the course of his life, Marzoli acquired a rich collection of weapons and armor, constituting one of the most important private collections in the world. In his will he left the precious collection to the city of Brescia, which undertook to create a Weapons Museum in the city's castle.

The importance of the Marzoli collection, to which the weapons and armor already present in the civic collections were added, lies not only in the quantity and quality of the pieces, but also in their selection. The intent of the knight of labor was not only to collect the best and rarest objects for sale, but to bear witness to the important production of weapons, which has always characterized the Brescia area and, more generally, Lombardy.

For lovers of architecture and ancient art, a visit to the Weapons Museum allows you to appreciate portions of frescoes from the Visconti era that decorate the rooms of the Keep. Also creating an atmospheric exhibition context is the coexistence of a Roman temple from the 1st century AD, of which the perimeter of the foundations and a large staircase are visible.