Description
The Accorsi-Ometto Museum is a decorative arts museum on Via Po, in the center of Turin: twenty-seven rooms furnished like an 18th-century home, with over three thousand objects. You visit it like a gentleman's house, where every room has its own character.
The route has two parts. In the display cases are Baccarat crystal, silver, snuffboxes and porcelain from Meissen, Frankenthal and Sèvres. Then come the furnished rooms, as the founder had arranged them in his villa on the hill.
Among French, Venetian and Piedmontese furniture, tapestries and paintings, the double cabinet by Pietro Piffetti stands out, signed and dated 1738: some consider it the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world.
Another piece to look at slowly is the Pesaro majolica double cabinet: a very rare piece of furniture, entirely covered in majolica.
His parents were concierges in a building on Via Po. Their son, Pietro Accorsi, became a famous antiques dealer, and in 1956 he bought that building. Today the old concierge's lodge is the museum's ticket office.
Accorsi had lived on the main floor since 1927, with his mother and two sisters. He bought the furnishings of entire elegant homes, took part in international auctions and acted as intermediary for the great museums.
"I wish my name to remain tied to works of art and antiques," he wrote in his will. He died in 1982 and left everything to Giulio Ometto, on condition that he turn it into a museum.
Ometto expanded the collection and carefully restored the 17th-century building, which began as the seat of the Antonian fathers. The museum was inaugurated on December 2, 1999. In 2019, upon Ometto's death, his own collection entered the museum too.
The painter Antonio Fontanesi also died in the building, on April 17, 1882: a plaque on the front door recalls it. The complex was born in 1616 as the seat of the Antonian fathers, with a church dedicated to Saint Anthony Abbot, renovated in the mid-18th century by Bernardo Vittone.
The route has two parts. In the display cases are Baccarat crystal, silver, snuffboxes and porcelain from Meissen, Frankenthal and Sèvres. Then come the furnished rooms, as the founder had arranged them in his villa on the hill.
Among French, Venetian and Piedmontese furniture, tapestries and paintings, the double cabinet by Pietro Piffetti stands out, signed and dated 1738: some consider it the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world.
Another piece to look at slowly is the Pesaro majolica double cabinet: a very rare piece of furniture, entirely covered in majolica.
His parents were concierges in a building on Via Po. Their son, Pietro Accorsi, became a famous antiques dealer, and in 1956 he bought that building. Today the old concierge's lodge is the museum's ticket office.
Accorsi had lived on the main floor since 1927, with his mother and two sisters. He bought the furnishings of entire elegant homes, took part in international auctions and acted as intermediary for the great museums.
"I wish my name to remain tied to works of art and antiques," he wrote in his will. He died in 1982 and left everything to Giulio Ometto, on condition that he turn it into a museum.
Ometto expanded the collection and carefully restored the 17th-century building, which began as the seat of the Antonian fathers. The museum was inaugurated on December 2, 1999. In 2019, upon Ometto's death, his own collection entered the museum too.
The painter Antonio Fontanesi also died in the building, on April 17, 1882: a plaque on the front door recalls it. The complex was born in 1616 as the seat of the Antonian fathers, with a church dedicated to Saint Anthony Abbot, renovated in the mid-18th century by Bernardo Vittone.