MUSEO DEL RISORGIMENTO – LEONESSA D’ITALIA

The Brescia Risorgimento Museum was among the first to be created in Italy. Established by public proclamation in 1887, it opened its doors in 1893 in Palazzo Martinengo da Barco, today home to the Tosio Martinengo Art Gallery. Staged on several occasions in Palazzo Tosio and in the Castle, it was reopened in 1959 in the Great Mile of the Castle, an early modern granary. Closed for good in 2015 due to structural problems, after extensive restoration and fitting-out work the Great Mile once again houses the collections. The Museum also occupies the space of the Small Mile, an additional former storage area in which the reception, ticket office and bookshop are located.

The Museo Leonessa d'Italia preserves and enhances a substantial part of the heritage dedicated to Brescia's Risorgimento history, which is mainly the result of donations that the citizenship has destined to the Civici Musei since the end of the nineteenth century. Relics, objects, paintings, flags, memorials and sculptures have thus accumulated over the course of more than a century, characterising the Museum's collecting history in a peculiar way. Compared to the previous ones, the new layout includes a selection of the most significant pieces, including recent acquisitions by the Brescia Musei Foundation, such as the large painting by Jean Adolphe Beaucé General Niel on the Medole field of 1861. Other important objects in the exhibition have instead been deposited by private individuals or institutions that have generously made them available to strengthen the museum's narrative.