Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Vicenza, Baroque art museum in central Vicenza, Italy
Palazzo Leoni Montanari is a late Baroque palace at Contra' San Corona 25 in central Vicenza, built from 1678 and completed in stages into the second half of the 18th century. Its rooms carry frescoes and stuccoes with Greco-Roman myths and allegories, including the Sala di Apollo and the Galleria della Verità. It now houses the Gallerie d'Italia - Vicenza, with 18th-century Venetian paintings and a collection of Russian icons.
The palace was commissioned in 1678 by the Leoni Montanari family, silk merchants who wanted to affirm their social rise in Vicenza. Construction, probably designed by Giuseppe Marchi with the Borrella firm, continued into the second half of the 18th century. In 1808 Count Girolamo Egidio di Velo inherited it and added neoclassical stuccoes and frescoes. From 1908 it belonged to a bank, and since the 1990s it has housed the Gallerie d'Italia museum of Intesa Sanpaolo.
Pietro Longhi, one of the best-known painters of everyday Venetian life, is well represented on the piano nobile. His works show gatherings, visits, and street scenes that give a clear picture of how ordinary people in 18th-century Venice spent their days.
The palace sits in the center of Vicenza and is easy to reach on foot from the main square and other landmarks in the area. The rooms are accessible to wheelchair users, and visitors can move through the exhibition at their own pace without following a fixed route.
The palace's Russian icon collection is part of the Gallerie d'Italia circuit run by Intesa Sanpaolo, which turned the building into a cultural venue in the 1990s. The palace survived the World War II bombings that hit this part of Vicenza, so its 17th-century stuccoes and frescoes are original.
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