[…] All I knew about the museum was that it was a private collection by a man named Frederick Stibbert. […]
Frederick was extreme wealthy and where did the money come from? Namely his grandfather – Giles Stibbert, who was the commander-in-chief for the British East India Company in Bengal at the end of the 18th century.
In fact, after Frederick inherited the estate, he never worked again and decided to start a never-ending collection of objects, antiques, and artifacts and turned his villa into a museum. Lucky guy!
When the size of the collections outgrew the villa, Stibbert hired architect Giuseppe Poggi, painter Gaetano Bianchi and sculptor Passaglia to add-on extra rooms.
There are 57 rooms in the villa filled with all sorts of western & eastern artifacts, often the walls covered with tapestries and paintings of famous figures from all over Europe, awesome paintings!
One of the most important pieces of the collection is the “petit costume”, made for the coronation of Napoleon as king of Italy in 1805.
The most extensive collection is around 12,000 pieces of European, Oriental, Islamic, Japanese arms and armour from the 15th century through the 19th century. […]
The hall of knights or Salone della Cavalcata is one of the largest rooms and includes full-scale replications of the horses and their armory. We couldn’t believe how many artifacts were jammed inside, these were some stylish (and protected) horses! Scattered around the museum are pieces from the Ferregamo clothing collection throughout the decades which was a little random but I liked seeing his different designs throughout the years.
Don’t forget to also check out the adjacent park in front of the museum — a really great place to just wander. Huge, green and lined with trees, I really want to come back and have a picnic in this green oasis.[…]
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