City Museum – Welcome San Costanzo

Historical noble residence from the 1800s

Historical residenceIt was one of the most important historic noble residences in Italy in the first half of the 19th century. A true coterie of artists and “Ateneo d'italica sapienza”.

The piano nobile of Palazzo Cassi houses a small but valuable collection of paintings, most of which are of ecclesiastical origin, except for a few that belonged to the Schiavini-Cassi family before the residence was sold to Cav. Gaetano Monti of Senigallia. The art gallery in Palazzo Cassi was thus born out of a state of necessity: the need to find new spaces where to transfer the works of art that had been removed from disused churches. In 1863, the San Costanzo Town Council approved the purchase of the building to establish the Municipal Residence, which was kept there until 2005. In 1978, the first municipal library was housed there, where it still resides today, carrying out a constant and important book lending activity. It was also the seat of the National Guard, the barracks for the Royal Carabinieri, the doctor's office and the home of the Municipal Secretary. In 1997, the Municipal Administration decided to undertake an important cultural operation, setting up an exhibition of ancient paintings owned by the Municipal Picture Gallery; altarpieces from the demolished Church of San Silvestro and other unknown provenances, such as oratories and religious chapels in the San Costanzo area that had been abandoned due to neglect or changes in the social-religious connective tissue. This was an operation of great cultural value because it brought together in a single exhibition the testimony of those furnishings documenting centuries of religious life and different forms of figurative culture. In 2004, the archaeology section was added with the setting up of the Archaeological Room of the Protohistoric Settlement and the Picenian Necropolis, where ceramic and bronze materials from the Protohistoric settlement discovered in the countryside of the municipal territory in the years 1980-1985 and from the archaeological excavation of the necropolis that took place in 1919-1920 and was carried out by the then Superintendency of Antiquities. The archaeological materials were partly conferred and returned by the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici delle Marche based in Ancona, and partly from sporadic surface collections made by local researchers and enthusiasts.