Museo Civico Ala Ponzone

"There are some cities that have splendid picture galleries, full of masterpieces: one of these cities, which was the center of a great pictorial school, is Cremona" (Federico Zeri)

The Pinacoteca of the "Ala Ponzone" Civic Museum is located in the sixteenth century Affaitati building. Constituted over the centuries since the sixteenth century, mainly with the collections of the Ponzone family, linked to public use with the testament of the Marquis Giuseppe Sigismondo Ala Ponzone in 1842, and expanded with works from some suppressed Cremonese churches, the collection of paintings and sculptures nowadays more than two thousand pieces, only partially exhibited in the rooms of the Museum, among which the "San Francesco in Meditation" by Caravaggio and "L'ortolano" by Giuseppe Arcimboldi stand out. A recent intervention led to the opening of the Sala del Platina which contains the precious inlaid wardrobe, a masterpiece of Renaissance renaissance art, performed for the Cathedral of Cremona between 1477 and 1480 by the Mantuan artist Giovanni Maria da Piadena, known as Platina . The Museo Civico also houses the Stanze per la Musica or the collection of historical instruments by Carlo Alberto Carutti, one of the most important collections of string instruments for quality, rarity and state of conservation of the instruments that make it up.