Palazzo Tozzoni is a historic residence in Imola, at via Garibaldi 18, formerly belonging to the Tozzoni counts, which keeps the furnishings, household items and mementoes of the family. It is a house museum, accredited to the Sistema museale nazionale and part of the Imola Musei network.
What to see
The Tozzoni family, who came to Imola from Tuscany at the end of the fifteenth century, lived in two adjoining houses on via della Fortezza, now via Garibaldi; the palace that joined them was built from 1726 to a design by Domenico Trifogli and completed in 1738. In 1978 the last descendant, Sofia Serristori Tozzoni, gave it to the Comune with all its furnishings; it has been open as a house museum since 1981 and since 28 February 2023 it is among the «Case e studi delle persone illustri dell'Emilia-Romagna».
The route runs from the ground floor to the piano nobile along the staircase adorned with sculptures by Francesco Janssens; the most important rooms are those of the three apartments, the Barocchetto, the Empire and the Veranda, alongside the dining room, the drawing rooms, the old kitchens and the library commissioned by Count Giorgio Barbato Tozzoni (1781-1873), with texts on history, numismatics, agriculture and literature and some sixteenth-century printed books. The collections include about 170 paintings, mainly by Bolognese and Romagna artists, the oldest of the sixteenth century, among them the Portrait of Pier Paolo Tozzoni (1584) by Lavinia Fontana, and a rich nineteenth-century photographic collection, with an album that recounts the voyage around the world made by Francesco Giuseppe Tozzoni between 1882 and 1885 aboard the corvette Vettor Pisani; there is also an ethnographic collection.
Visiting
The palace is at via Garibaldi 18, in Imola. The sources consulted give no hours or fees; they mention the official website of the Imola Musei network: check them.
Our editors' tip
In the archive is the mannequin of Orsola Bandini Tozzoni, made by her husband Giorgio Barbato after his wife's death, in 1836: it is dressed in her real clothes and coiffed with her hair, and was restored in 2016. It is a unique piece in the house museum.
