The Revoltella Museum is located in a Neo-Renaissance building from 1858 and overlooks Piazza Venezia. It includes the private apartment of Baron Revoltella, owner of the palace of the same name, and the Brunner Palace which houses the Gallery of Modern Art on the third floor.
Pasquale Revoltella was born in Venice in 1795 and moved, as a child, with his family to Trieste. He became an important figure in the political and above all economic life of the city and contributed to the opening of the Suez Canal.He died unmarried in 1869 and donated with his will the Palazzo Revoltella with the Museum and the Chalet with the Revoltella Park, in the Ferdinandeo area. to the city of Trieste.
He died unmarried in 1869 and donated the Palazzo Revoltella with the Museum and the Chalet with the Revoltella Park, in the Ferdinandeo area, to the city of Trieste.
Each room of his private apartment, inside Palazzo Revoltella, was cared for in the smallest decorative and ornamental details.
Passionate about art and the taste for beauty, the baron enriched every room of the palace with works of art.
The dining room, the green living room, the blue living room, the yellow living room, the ballroom, the domed room and many other rooms each had distinct functions of representation and art.
The sculptural work “the Fountain of the Aurisina Nymph” (1858) by Pietro Magni welcomes visitors to Palazzo Revoltella and represents the construction of the second aqueduct in Trieste, a true technological jewel.
On the first floor “The cutting of the isthmus of Suez” (1863) by Pietro Magni, represents Europe that holds together, shaking hands, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
In addition to the works of the baron, the Municipality acquired numerous other works, paid for with the donations that Revoltella himself had made to the city. The works on display today are about 350 between paintings and sculptures.
Palazzo Brunner houses the works of Italian authors of the second half of the nineteenth century (third floor), the works acquired in the first decades of the twentieth century (fourth floor), the works of artists from Friuli-Venezia-Giulia (fifth floor) and national ( sixth) of the second half of the twentieth century.
The works on display are, among others, by artists such as Giovanni Fattori, Domenico Induno, Giuseppe de Nittis, Ignacio Zuloaga, Mario Sironi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Manlio Rho, Mario De Luigi, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giacomo Manzù , Francesco Hayez, Alice Pscaropulo.