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National Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome

National Museum of Musical Instruments

The National Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome is part of the network of the city's State Museums Directorate, a territorial branch of the Ministry of Culture.

With more than 3,500 works of great historical, artistic and musical significance , the National Museum of Musical Instruments has been housed since 1974 in the Palazzina Samoggia , one of the three buildings that once housed the barracks of the "Prince of Piedmont", built at the from the 1900s, in the area adjacent to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

In 1964, the vast collection of musical instruments arrived in this place, which belonged to Gennaro Evangelista Gorga (1865-1957), a well-known tenor, with a short and dazzling career, chosen by Puccini to play the part of Rodolfo in the first representation of the Bohème.

Passionate collector of various objects ( paintings, sculptures, archaeological finds, ancient volumes, surgical instruments, ancient weapons ) he came to own 150,000 pieces in the utopian intention of creating an Encyclopedic Museum of human knowledge.

The original nucleus of musical instruments of the Gorga collection was subsequently enriched by exceptional acquisitions which reinforce the uniqueness of the state collection which includes objects for about 2000 years of history, with many absolute rarities among which the Barberini Harp ( 1633-34), the oldest surviving German harpsichord (1534) by Hans Mueller , the extremely rare piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1722), inventor of the instrument who, by supplanting the harpsichord, radically changed the history of music.

Gallery

Timetable and tickets

Address

Piazza Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 9/a
00185 Rome

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