Photo: Al*from*Lig · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Civico museo biblioteca dell'Attore

Museum and library of the performing arts in the attic of the former Seminary of Genoa, with the studies of Salvini, Govi, Fersen and Lopez, costumes, sketches and the collections of great actors.

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About the museum

The Museo Biblioteca dell'Attore was founded in 1966 as a section of the Teatro Stabile di Genova, on the initiative of Ivo Chiesa, Sandro d'Amico and Luigi Squarzina. It immediately gathered the papers and memorabilia of the Salvini family and, in 1967, received as a gift the large collection of Adelaide Ristori. Its first seat was in Piazza Marsala. In 1971 it became an independent foundation, and in 1976 it obtained legal recognition; in 1982 the historic seat at Villetta Serra, restored by the Comune, was inaugurated.

In 1994 the Liguria Region recognised it as a cultural institution of regional interest. Since June 2013 the museum has been based at Via del Seminario 10, in the centre, close to the Biblioteca Berio and the library of the Museo del Risorgimento, in larger spaces: it occupies part of the attic, on the third and fourth floors, of an austere 17th-century complex that was the Seminary for clerics until the Second World War.

The permanent displays include the studies of Tommaso Salvini, Gilberto Govi, Alessandro Fersen and Sabatino Lopez, the costume of Signor Bonaventura and, at the De Amicis children's library, the Rissone puppet theatre. The other materials (costumes, stage props, sketches, figurines, models, photographs, recordings, posters and bills) are shown on rotation along a route from the era of the great actor and 19th-century theatre to the present day.

The institution also holds a specialist library of more than 45,000 volumes and an archive with autographs, photographs and scripts; since 2018 it has also housed the theatre library of Guido Ceronetti.