The Pinacoteca Rambaldi is a museum in Sanremo, in the hamlet of Coldirodi, on the promontory west of the town. Established in 1865, it grew out of the bequest that the priest Paolo Stefano Rambaldi left at his death to his native village, Colla, now Coldirodi: a collection of paintings and a library.
What to see
The collection is linked to the social and cultural circles in which the priest lived in nineteenth-century Florence, where for ten years he was rector of the Seminary. It comprises one hundred paintings from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Among them stand out the Madonna and Child attributed to Lorenzo di Credi, of Verrocchio's workshop, the Holy Family by Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, Saint Sebastian tended by the pious women by Michele Rocca, paintings by Salvator Rosa including «The Temptations of Saint Anthony», «The Holy Family at household tasks» by Jacopo Vignali and some portraits by Anton Raphael Mengs.
Beside the picture gallery is the library, with more than five thousand volumes, among them precious incunabula, sixteenth-century editions and rare manuscripts collected by Rambaldi over his lifetime. Just as precious is his correspondence with writers and figures of the Risorgimento such as Silvio Pellico, Vincenzo Gioberti, Alessandro Manzoni and Massimo d'Azeglio.
Visiting
Since July 2006 the picture gallery has been displayed in the larger rooms of the Museo di Villa Luca, in Coldirodi, a late nineteenth-century residence that belonged to the family of Luca Cassini. Opening hours and tickets must be checked.
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Coldirodi, then called La Colla, was for a time separated from Sanremo: on 1 February 1753 the Republic of Genoa decreed its detachment from the Magnifica Comunità of Sanremo, after the inhabitants' protests against duties paid without benefits. The priest's name is also borne by Coldirodi's band, the «P.S. Rambaldi», founded in the nineteenth century.
