Museo Nazionale di San Matteo

The history of the Museum begins with the culture of antiquarian recovery alive in Pisa since the eighteenth century, which is identified with the first nucleus of paintings of "primitives" collected by the canon of the cathedral Sebastiano Zucchetti (1796). The collection left in use for the School of Drawing, is increased in the following century of other paintings and sculptures, also recovered through acquisitions to the state made in the Napoleonic and post-unitary, with the gradual confluence in the local Academy of Fine Arts. Only in 1893 Iginio Benvenuto Supino set up the new prestigious Civic Museum at the convent of San Francesco, of which he also produced a precious catalog. In 1949 the new National Museum was born, which houses the collections of the former Civic Museum with further increases and settles in the restored convent of San Matteo in Soarta. Of the ancient medieval monastery (eleventh century) today only some of the original structures can be identified, mainly in the interior rooms. In the mid-sixteenth century, in any case, the convent was subjected to changes, as revealed by the date in the cloister, to Tuscan sandstone columns and capitals. At the end of the eighteenth century or at the beginning of the nineteenth century it probably dates back to the current entrance façade to the museum, overlooking the Lungarno, of neoclassical inspiration.