Museo civico Arturo Martini

Civic museum in the 18th-century Villa Groppallo, with works of the Premio Vado, the plaster casts of Arturo Martini and the collections of Don Cesare Queirolo.

Opening hoursFree admission

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About the museum

The museum is housed in the 18th-century Villa Groppallo, formerly Villa De Mari, in via Aurelia in Vado Ligure. The rooms present the history of the town, the collections donated by Don Cesare Queirolo – Roman marbles and coins –, the works of Mario Raimondi and the holdings of the Premio Vado, an art competition held between 1951 and 1963.

The works of the Premio Vado are paintings and sculptures of socially engaged figurative realism of the 1950s, by artists such as Pizzinato, Treccani, Mazzullo, Guerreschi and Cabiati. The museum also preserves evidence of the sculptor Arturo Martini’s activity in Vado: the original plaster casts of La Gloria, La Vittoria, Il Sacrificio and La Storia, made for the town’s war memorial, and Il Cieco and Il Benefattore, a terracotta monument dedicated to Don Cesare Queirolo.

On the upper floor of the villa, which also houses the Biblioteca civica Fratelli Rosselli, is a collection of 17th- and 18th-century paintings of the Genoese school, from the Queirolo bequest of 1880.

Highlights

Original plaster casts by Arturo Martini for the war memorial of Vado Ligure
Works of the Premio Vado (1951–1963)
Roman marbles and coins from the Queirolo collection
Paintings of the Genoese school of the 17th and 18th centuries
Housed in the 18th-century Villa Groppallo

Permanent exhibitions

Premio Vado e Arturo Martini – Works of the Premio Vado (1951–1963) and original plaster casts by Arturo Martini for the war memorial of Vado Ligure.
Collezioni Queirolo – Roman marbles and coins and paintings of the Genoese school from the bequest of Don Cesare Queirolo.

Operated by: Comune di Vado Ligure
Visitors per year: approx. 2,425