Museo Diocesano Francesco Gonzaga

In the year 1974 was held, in the Ducal Palace in Mantua, an exhibition entitled "Art treasures in the land of Gonzaga", which introduced a series of masterpieces hitherto almost unknown, largely coming from the churches of the diocese. The success of the show led its founder, Monsignor Luigi Bosio, to design a permanent exhibition of such works, brought together in a special museum. The "Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art," as it was then called, was opened in 1983, collecting various artifacts - paintings, sculptures, jewelery, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, ivory and even warlike instruments - no longer in use after the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council, or positioned at sites not able to ensure its proper preservation. After the opening, the first nucleus of the exhibits went rapidly growing, even for substantial private donations, and in parallel it has expanded the space allocated to them, until they became a museum among the largest not only in the city: according of many experts, the beauty and preciousness of its treasures, some of which are unparalleled in the world, giving it an international relevance. The museum, after obtaining recognition by the Lombardy Region, inaugurated June 7, 2008 the new production and the recovery of the neoclassical front.