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Content.
Description and history of the building
The Natural History and Archaeological Museum is housed in the two Dominican cloisters flanking the church of Santa Corona, which faces onto the street of the same name. The smaller, seventeenth-century cloister is on the northern side of the church, as is the old library. This was built between 1496 and 1502, probably to a design by Rocco da Vicenza, but is not currently in use due to the damage caused during the Second World War. It separates the small cloister from the second, larger one built in the second half of the fifteenth century, which has columns in Vicenza stone embellished with fifteenth-century Gothic capitals. Francesco Muttoni designed both the loggia and the western facade, which has been repeatedly altered by subsequent works.
The cloister rooms once housed not only the priests but also the office of the Inquisition. This was on the first floor of the western wing of the larger cloister from the end of the sixteenth century, but was moved to a larger space in the same wing of the smaller cloister in 1724.
In 1811 the cloister was used as a civic college, then as an Austrian military hospital and later as school (1867). Subsequent works led to the addition of the current facade with triple entrance in Ionic order with rustic plinth built in 1823 to a design by Angelo Casarotti da Schio. In 1877 it became the home of the prestigious technical institute founded by the industrialist Alessandro Rossi, whose name it adopted only in 1911, becoming the “Istituto Tecnico Alessandro Rossi’. The building continued to house the school until 1962.
It was assigned for use as a museum and a first restoration completed in 1987, but the Natural History and Archaeological Museum was not opened until September 1991.
Phone +39 0444 222811