A fascinating journey through the history of fashion between revolutions and revivals, between sumptuous fabrics and refined accessories. The new exhibition of the Textile Collections, which is hosted in the mezzanine spaces of Palazzo Bianco, guides the public on a seductive journey to discover the ideals of beauty and the continuous changes in taste between the 17th and 20th centuries.

The female universe is the protagonist of this itinerary, which winds between East and West, highlighting the variety and importance of the Civic Textile Collections through a selection of some of the approximately 3 thousand works, in continuous expansion, which constitute today one of the most important sections of the Strada Nuova Museums, the museum structure that summarizes the history, art and culture of the Renaissance and Baroque eras in Genoa.

Luxurious clothes and fashion accessories, sometimes true small works of art, are combined with paintings, prints and other objects from the Civic Collections, in a succession of works united by the highest executive quality and the use of precious materials that However, they also tell the daily life of a crowd of women who preceded us. This narrative culminates with an exceptional female character and with a real full immersion in the past: a period room dedicated to the Napoleonic period and to an extraordinary woman who was one of the protagonists of that era, Anna Pieri Brignole-Sale ( 1765-1815). Grandmother of Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, Anna, who lived in the tormented years of the end of the Genoese Republic and the annexation of Genoa to the French Empire, was at the center of contemporary political, artistic and cultural life and, at the same time , a charming lady, who dominated the social scene. Some of the very refined furniture that furnished the apartment built for her in Palazzo Rosso and some objects that belonged to her, an updated expression of the new neoclassical taste that was establishing itself in Europe, are presented in the last room, alongside the clothes of the same era, in an evocative environmental setting, which will evoke that vanished world down to the smallest details.