Museo Il Divino Infante

The Museo Il Divino Infante in Gardone Riviera houses over 300 sculptures depicting the Infant Jesus and Neapolitan nativity scenes, offering insights into sacred art and restoration techniques.

Planning your visit

Museo Il Divino Infante is a specialist collection of considerable depth: over 300 sculptures of the infant Jesus, spanning several centuries, together with Neapolitan nativity figures. The Bambino Gesù was a devotional form with its own workshops and conventions, produced in wood, terracotta, wax and ivory, dressed in embroidered garments, and the collection traces how the type developed across regions and periods.

The Neapolitan presepe tradition is the other half. Naples produced nativity scenes of extraordinary elaboration from the eighteenth century, populating the sacred scene with entire street populations — innkeepers, musicians, market traders, animals — in finely modelled terracotta with glass eyes and real fabric. The craft survives commercially in Naples today.

The museum also covers restoration technique, which is unusual and genuinely interesting given the fragility of the materials.

Gardone Riviera sits on Lake Garda's western shore, near the Vittoriale, Gabriele d'Annunzio's extravagant estate-museum. Bookable options include combination tickets with the local paper museum. Allow an hour. Current availability is listed below.