Museo Nazionale d'Arte Medievale e Moderna
The first thing you notice is the courtyard — a porticoed Renaissance space attributed to Bernardo Rossellino, quiet enough that your footsteps carry. The Palazzo Bruni Ciocchi has been holding things worth looking at since the mid-15th century, and the twenty rooms inside arrange themselves in a long, unhurried chronology from the early Middle Ages to the 19th century.
This is where Arezzo keeps its depth. Giorgio Vasari's enormous panel painting of the Feast of Esther and Ahasuerus — made for a monastery refectory — fills one room almost entirely. Nearby, 13th-century panels by Margarito d'Arezzo sit alongside maiolica, glazed terracotta by Andrea della Robbia, and a scapular that once belonged to a beatified pope.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to linger in the maiolica rooms longer than they planned, and to seek out the roof garden — Renaissance in inspiration, sitting at first-floor level on the rear of the palace — which most visitors walk past without realising it's accessible. The Salmi Collection, added in 1964, rewards a second look once you know its origin.
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Book directly at the providerHow Museo Nazionale d'Arte Medievale e Moderna came to be
The palazzo was built in the mid-15th century for Donato Bruni, whose father Leonardo had served as Chancellor of the Florentine Republic and was one of the defining humanist figures of his era. The building later became known as the Palazzo della Dogana.
The museum's collections took their modern form after WWII bombing destroyed the Palazzo Pretorio, where Arezzo's civic picture gallery had been housed. Works moved here, the building was restored, and the museum was formally founded in 1958, inaugurating in 1972. Art historian Mario Salmi donated his personal collection in 1964; his daughter added further works in 2010. Holdings also draw from the Fraternita dei Laici, founded 1262, and from monasteries suppressed in the 19th century.
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