The museums of Brescia

1. Art Gallery Tosio-Martinengo
2. Santa Giulia – The city’s museum
3. Museum of the Risorgimento
4. Museum of Ancient Arms

The civic art gallery Tosio-Martinengo has its Headquarters in Martinengo Mansion. Made from the meeting of collections that Count Paolo Tosio and Count Leopardo Martinengo had donated to the city. It tells the history of Brescia's Art from the 1300s to the 1700s. There are two works by Raphael and the paintings of the great Brescian Renaissance season with Foppa and subsequent Moretto, Romanino and Savoldo whose “painting of reality” influenced the ways of Caravaggio. Also the remarkable collection of work by Giacomo Ceruti, “Pitocchetto”, who acquired his fame in Brescia by painting the poor and beggars.

This museum is housed in the historical monastry of St Giulia and has about eleven thousand exhibits, divided into six sections, arranged in the three cloisters and three churches of the former monastery, which tells the story of Brescia from prehistory to the collection of the nineteenth century. Among the treasures is the “winged Victory”, Roman bronze statue (perhaps Greek), about two metres tall; there are some fine gilded bronze heads of Roman Emporers; the cross of Desiderio; the diptych of Boethius; the reliquary. The museum is enriched by a the possibility to visit the Domus dell’Ortaglia, the two Roman houses of the “fountain” and the ""Dioniso"" which constitute one of the largest archaelogical sites that you can visit in the middle of a city inside a museum.

The Civic Museum of the Risorgimento, is found inside Brescia castle, in the corn store (Grande Miglio). It’s one of the most important museums in Italy: the collection consists of documents received from bequests, donations and purchases that constitute the evocative account of the Risorgimento period until 1870, organised in two big exhibit halls. You pass from the last period of the Venetian domination in Brescia (second half of the eighteenth century) to the Republic of Brescia, the Napoleonic period, from the wars of Independence to the ten days of Brescia,( Dieci Giornate di Brescia) ,as well as the Expedition of the Thousand and the Zanardellian time.

The Civic Museum of Ancient Arms “Luigi Marzoli”,is housed in the fourteenth century Visconti Keep( Mastio Visconteo) inside Brescia castle. Inside you will also find the ancient ruins of the Roman temple that stood on top of the Cidneo.The museum displays about 600 pieces of armour, weapons and firearms from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. This collection of Brescia firearms is very valuable and famous throughout Europe