Arsenal Of The Maritime Republic, Amalfi, Italy

The structure of the arsenal consists of two large stone-built halls with vaulting supported by repeated pointed arches. The vaulting rests on ten piers, originally there were twenty two, the missing twelve and the structure they supported having been lost to centuries of coastal erosion. The main function of the arsenal was the building, repair and storage of warships. Amalfitan war-galleys were among the largest to be found in the Mediterranean during the Early Middle Ages.

The building now contains architectural and sculptural remains, a row-barge used in the Historical Regatta, a number of models of ships and it also acts as a venue for visual art exhibitions. Starting from December 2010, the Ancient Arsenals of Amalfi host the Compass Museum on the premises of the two aisles of the building, which were spared by the Amalfi seaquake of 1343.

Museums in Italy

User Reviews

Stefano Nervo (12 months ago)
Un posto suggestivo ma non adeguatamente valorizzato. La mostra non rende giustizia né alla storia di Amalfi, né al luogo.

Antonio Carmando (15 months ago)
Una parentesi d'arte che va a completare quella cornice storica e pittoresca che è la città di Amalfi. A due passi dal terminal degli autobus, il Museo Arsenale, che un tempo era un cantiere navale, dove si fabbricavano e riparavano navi, ospita mostre di quadri e sculture di artisti locali e non. Oltre a questo c'è molto altro: di tanto in tanto si possono osservare magnifici spettacoli teatrali, per lo più musical, di ogni genere ornati dalle bellissime arcate storiche del sito (posto delle foto di questi ultimi per l'appunto).

Old Kakuli (2 years ago)
Extraordinary place to visit... with the coastline ... launching ships would have been difficult......Architecturally this is close to the Islamic style .. the pointed arches, the cross vaults and pillars... a similar building was recently revealed in Jerusalem... the Amalphitan hospital founded in 1063..

Roany Romano (3 years ago)
Perfect

Bartosz Radojewski (3 years ago)
Place is not to big and it takes short time to visit. Entry fee is a bit to high for the quality of attractions. All together not bad but not so impressive.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

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Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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Arsenal Of The Maritime Republic

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