Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese
The vast, never-quite-finished Farnese palace looming over Piazza Cittadella houses one of the most undervisited civic museum complexes in northern Italy, including a pinacoteca with works by Botticelli and Guercino, a carriage museum, and the single most famous object in Piacenza — the Fegato di Piacenza, a 2,200-year-old Etruscan bronze sheep's liver used for divination.
The Fegato di Piacenza
Discovered in a field near Gossolengo in 1877, this palm-sized bronze liver is divided into sections labelled with the names of Etruscan deities — essentially a map of the heavens projected onto an animal organ, used by haruspices to read omens before battle or political decisions. It is one of fewer than a dozen such objects known to exist worldwide.
The accompanying explanatory panels are detailed and bilingual (Italian and English), and the museum has recently added a digital interactive that lets you rotate a 3D model of the liver and read each inscription. Allow at least 30 minutes with this object alone.
The Palace and Pinacoteca
Palazzo Farnese was begun in 1558 for Ottavio Farnese and his wife Margaret of Austria but was never completed — the missing northern wing gives the courtyard an oddly open, melancholy grandeur. The scale of the rooms is staggering, and the frescoed ceilings in the ducal apartments have been meticulously restored.
The pinacoteca holds a Botticelli Madonna, several important Guercino canvases and a remarkable collection of 16th-century Emilian portraits. The carriage museum on the ground floor, featuring the gilded state coach of the Farnese dukes, is an unexpected highlight that children and adults alike find genuinely spectacular.
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