Museo Mario Praz, House museum at Palazzo Primoli, Rome, Italy
The Museo Mario Praz occupies the third floor of Palazzo Primoli at 1 via Giuseppe Zanardelli. The apartment, where Mario Praz lived from 1964 until his death in 1982, was rearranged as it was at his death and opened as a museum in 1995. It holds over 1,200 objects, mainly from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including English furniture, French bronzes, Russian malachite, Bohemian crystal, German porcelain, and a collection of wax figures.
An English literature professor and art critic built this collection over sixty years before his death in nineteen eighty-two. His selection of European artworks and antiques reflects his deep knowledge of craftsmanship and design history across different regions.
The collection reflects Mario Praz's taste for the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with English furniture, French bronzes, Russian malachite, Bohemian crystal, German porcelain and views of Italian and European cities. Portraits of ruling families such as the Bourbons and Bonapartes hang beside unknown 19th-century faces. Praz described the rooms in his autobiography La casa della vita.
The museum occupies the third floor of Palazzo Primoli at 1 Via Giuseppe Zanardelli; the Napoleonic Museum is in the same building. The apartment was closed for restoration in 2022 and reopened on 1 March 2024. Mario Praz's library and part of his archive can be consulted at the Fondazione Primoli on the first floor of the palace.
The collection was bought by the state for 2.1 billion lire and first stored at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna for inventory before being returned to Praz's apartment. The museum also holds his library, and the Napoleonic Museum of Rome occupies the same Palazzo Primoli.
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