What to See in Voghera: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Museo Storico "Giuseppe Beccari"

The Museo storico di Voghera «Giuseppe Beccari» is devoted to Italian military history between the Napoleonic age and the twentieth century. It is named after Giuseppe Beccari, the soldier from Voghera who wanted it founded. Established in 1971, it has an exhibition area of 1200 square metres and is housed in Voghera's old cavalry barracks, dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II, first king of united Italy.
What to see
The collections are made up of military uniforms, Italian and foreign, edged weapons and firearms, equipment, documents and medals, from the early nineteenth century to the Second World War; the Risorgimento is strongly represented. The collections are completed by the paintings of military artists, who portrayed scenes of war directly from the front. One room is reserved for finds of local origin.
The museum includes a historical library with documents of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Carabinieri: letters, diaries and postcards sent from the front by soldiers, posters and prints. The collection of photographs, from the First to the Second World War, is particularly rich.
Visiting
Opening times and visiting arrangements should be checked on the museum's official website or with Voghera town council.
Our editors' tip
The cavalry left its mark outside the museum too: the nearby church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which stands close to the former barracks, was long used by the military as a stable and store before returning to the friars.
Teatro Valentino Garavani

The Teatro Valentino Garavani, formerly the Teatro Sociale, is Voghera's theatre, built between 1842 and 1845 on the site between piazza Duomo and via Emilia. The first design, by Felice Moraglia of Lodi, was criticised by some shareholders and the commission passed to the architect Gioacchino Dell'Isola, who wanted the entrance on via Emilia. The work was paid for with a grant from the town council and with the sale of the boxes, drawn by lot among the shareholders. It was born for opera, which in Voghera was tied to the Ascension fair, and later hosted operettas, plays, lectures and cinema.
What to see
The auditorium, designed for about 1200 people, has three tiers of boxes with the gallery above and the stalls. The gilded relief decorations are of wood and papier-mâché, like the mouldings around the coffers of the proscenium, very similar to those of La Scala. On the façade is a pink stone plaque with a medallion of Giuseppe Verdi, by the sculptor Enrico Cassi, unveiled in 1903.
Downgraded to a cinema in the twentieth century, the theatre was closed as unsafe in 1986 and lay abandoned for thirty years. In 1954 the box-holders had decided to remove the boxes to increase the seating, but the Ministry of Education stopped the project by invoking the protection order on the monument. The complete restoration, begun in 2018, ended in 2023, and the renewed theatre was inaugurated on 26 September of that year.
Visiting
Season, tickets and visits should be checked on the website of the theatre or of Voghera town council.
Our editors' tip
In 1889 a twenty-year-old Arturo Toscanini conducted Aida here, and Tosca reached Voghera less than three years after its Rome premiere. The theatre now bears the name of the fashion designer Valentino Garavani, born in Voghera, who in May 2022 personally attended the exhibition of his gowns staged here for his ninetieth birthday.