Casa del Podestà Museum

The Casa del Podestà Museum in Lonato del Garda, Italy, is a 15th-century residence restored by Ugo Da Como, housing a vast collection of art and over 50,000 books.

Planning your visit

Ugo Da Como was a lawyer, senator and collector who bought the medieval Casa del Podesta below the Rocca of Lonato in 1906 and spent decades turning it into a scholar's house — restoring the fifteenth-century building, furnishing it with paintings, sculpture, ceramics and furniture, and assembling a library of over 50,000 volumes including incunabula and manuscripts.

He left the whole thing to a foundation on his death in 1941, with the instruction that nothing be changed, and it has not been. The house is preserved exactly as he arranged it, which makes it a rare surviving example of an early twentieth-century private collection in situ.

The library, with its wooden galleries and reading room, is the most striking space.

The Rocca above, a Visconti-Venetian fortress with views over Lake Garda, is usually visited with it.

Bookable options include Rocca entry with guided visits to the house museum. Current availability is listed below.