A museum dedicated to Italian goldsmithing and jewellery art

History

Vicenza, it is known, is the City of Gold, as it boasts of producing one third of all Italian gold work.
Since antiquity, Vicenza has been one of Italy’s main centres for goldsmith production: as early as 1400, the Fraglia degli Orafi di Vicenza (Vicenza Guild of Goldsmiths), an association comprising no less than 150 artisans, was established.

But the vocation as a city of gold has much older origins. Its beginnings can be attributed to the Paleovenetian age, around the 8th century B.C., when the ancient Venetians began to express a craftsmanship already capable of producing worked metal objects of various kinds.

Their fame as skilled gold wielders and creators of wonders did not take long to spread throughout Italy, being immediately appreciated by the Venetians and later by the Church, which entrusted Vicenza’s craftsmen with the creation of precious artefacts. The period between the end of the 13th century and the 15th century offers interesting works of sacred goldsmithing: processional and processional crosses, precious chalices, reliquaries that document the development of local goldsmithing art and are currently conserved by the Diocese of Vicenza at the Diocesan Museum in Vicenza.

The first 6-hour wristwatch

On the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, the Soprana watch company, one of Italy’s 150 historic enterprises, and Movitalia, importer of the prestigious single-hand watch brand Meistersinger, create the first six-hour wristwatch.

An instrument for measuring time designed in 1794 by Giambattista Rodella, a genius watchmaker at the Specola in Padua, finally takes shape in an exclusive design.
In the history of watchmaking, the role of Italian master craftsmen has been fundamental

A jewel in the city of Palladio

Perhaps not everyone knows that Vicenza holds a jewel, the reproduction of the city surrounded by walls made entirely of silver

In 1577 the City Council, with the opinion of many excellent Venetian masters and Andrea Palladio, decided to donate the model of the city as an ex voto to the Madonna of Monte Berico to ward off the plague. It was built in a wooden structure and then covered with silver plates. Unfortunately the Napoleonic troops defrauded and destroyed it in 1797.

There are various testimonies of this model, among which important are the reproductions in the paintings of Alessandro Maganza and Francesco Maffei.