Casa museo Antonino Greco

Eighteenth-century house museum in Vincolise, in Magisano, the home of the patriot Antonino Greco, with period furnishings, rare books, family documents and a chapel.

Opening hours unknownFree admission

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About the museum

The palace, in Vincolise (a hamlet of Magisano), dates to the second half of the 18th century. Antonino Greco, a Calabrian jurist and patriot and a leading figure of the Risorgimento in the Catanzaro Presila, was born here on 16 June 1819. At the wish of one of the last heirs, Giovanni Greco, the house became the first house museum in Calabria: the family has returned to the community objects from a rural civilisation that has now disappeared, antique furniture, rare books and a large number of historical documents.

The building extends over two floors and a basement. On the ground floor is the entrance hall, where the owner once received agricultural produce and the rents and dues of tenant farmers, and the kitchen, which retains its original structure with cupboards in arte povera (folk craft style) and an old oven. The upper floor contains rooms furnished with period furniture and valuable household items.

The library holds rare texts on philosophy, pedagogy, science, law and religion, Latin dictionaries from the 19th and 18th centuries, a UTET encyclopaedia of 1863 and a 16th-century edition of Petrarch. The family chapel, built around 1850 and consecrated with a papal bull of Pius IX, houses gold reliquaries, a silver chalice, crucifixes and a painting by Antonio Sarnelli. Other objects include papier-mâché nativity scenes, hand-embroidered linen and a painted cradle of wood and wicker in 18th-century Venetian style.

Highlights

Birthplace of the patriot and jurist Antonino Greco (1819)
First house museum in Calabria, with antique furniture and objects of rural life
Library with rare books, including a 16th-century edition of Petrarch
Family chapel, built around 1850, with reliquaries and a painting by Antonio Sarnelli
Original kitchen with cupboards in arte povera and an antique oven

Permanent exhibition

Casa-museo e collezioni della famiglia Greco – Rooms of the 18th-century palace with furnishings, library, family chapel, papier-mâché nativity scenes and objects of rural life.

Visitors per year: approx. 150