Museo di Montelupo, Ceramics museum in Montelupo Fiorentino, Italy.

Museo di Montelupo is a ceramics museum in a small Tuscan town that displays thousands of pottery pieces, bowls, and decorative objects from different periods. The collection shows how production techniques developed from medieval methods through to modern manufacturing processes.

The idea of a ceramics museum appeared in Montelupo's 1946 postwar reconstruction plan, but only took shape after 1973, when repaving work uncovered the abandoned pozzo dei lavatoi, a well about 27 metres deep and 2.50 metres wide. From the 13th century it had served as a dump for kiln waste. Excavations by the Gruppo Archeologico di Montelupo from 1975, followed by the Soprintendenza Archeologica della Toscana in 1975-76, yielded about 300 pieces from the first quarter of the 1500s, shown in 1977 at the Enrico Corradini school. The museum opened in the Palazzo del Podestà in July 1983 and moved to the renovated school building on 24 May 2008.

The collection displays ceramic pieces that show how pottery shaped daily life and local traditions during the Renaissance period. You can see how these objects were actually used in homes and workplaces, revealing the connection between craft and community.

The museum occupies three floors of the former Enrico Corradini primary school, a large 1930s building, with 12 rooms and two corridors over 2,100 square metres, 1,500 of them exhibition space. Temporary exhibitions are held in the ground-floor hall, and a multimedia-equipped multipurpose room is on the first floor. The ceramics section moved here on 24 May 2008, while the archaeological section went to the former church complex of Santi Quirico, Lucia e Pietro d'Alcantara in May 2007.

The best-known piece is a basin dated 1509, signed "Lo", the mark of Lorenzo di Piero Sartori's workshop. It once belonged to the Rothschild collection in Paris and is painted with grotesques on a blue, yellow and red ground; its dominant red pigment gave the name "Rosso di Montelupo".