The Museo civico of Conegliano is housed in the surviving tower of the castle, on top of the Colle di Giano. It was established in 1946, immediately after the Second World War, when the town administration wanted to give a home to relics and mementoes that until then had been kept in the town hall. Born as a museum of local history, partly because of the interests of its first director, Antonio Tocchio, under the direction of Alfredo De Mas it moved towards art, with purchases on the antiques market: today the largest section is the picture gallery, which documents different moments of Venetian painting.
What to see
The collections include archaeological finds, detached frescoes, paintings, coins, weapons, inscribed stones and mementoes of Ferruccio Benini, the actor from Conegliano. Among the works are a large fresco of the Virgin with the Child and four saints, donated to the town in 1954, a Roman funerary aedicule of the mid-first century AD with two figures in togas, and a sixteenth-century Last Supper, a detached fresco attributed to Battista da Sarano.
In the Sala del Camino there is a chimney hood shaped like the doge's cap. The top floor is devoted to personalities linked to Conegliano, with records, busts and objects that belonged to them. Since 2004 the museum has also displayed a model of the castle as it was in the time of the Serenissima, the work of Ennio Tiveron of Treviso.
Visiting
At the end of the route a staircase leads to the top of the tower. From the terrace you see the town and the Venetian plain, which in favourable conditions reaches as far as the Venice lagoon, a good part of the Friulian plain, the morainic hills of the Treviso area and the Belluno Prealps. The merlons are Ghibelline: they date from the restoration of 1849. Times and tickets should be checked with the town council of Conegliano.
Our editors' tip
In the Last Supper look at what is on the table: among the glassware appear river crayfish, which in the Treviso area are often found in this subject. There is more than one hypothesis about their meaning: a zodiacal allusion, heresy, or the betrayal of Judas.
