The Railway Modeling Museum is located on the southern outskirts of Città di Castello, in Villa Capelletti.
The Villa, a sixteenth-century noble residence recently restored, is mentioned in the city’s historical records as the property of Cardinal Vitelli, a powerful prelate from Città di Castello connected to the Medici family of Florence. It later belonged to Marquis Gioacchino Capelletti, a descendant of Juliet Capulet, who from a young age had a strong passion for modeling and machinery that led him throughout his long life to assemble a rich collection donated, along with the villa, to the Municipality of Città di Castello.
The Museum is part of the Garavelle museum complex, along with the “Livio dalla Ragione” Center of Folk Traditions. The museum’s exhibition area is currently spread over the first floor of the villa in the airy salons, sitting rooms, and bedrooms that once housed the Capelletti family. The collection, donated with the villa to the Città di Castello Savings Bank Foundation in 1963, is made up of over 150 scale models of machines in 1:20 and 1:40 scale. The eleven still functioning steam locomotives, seventeen passenger carriages, eighty-eight freight cars, along with models of steam machines for agriculture and road maintenance, and a diorama of a period station make this collection one of the most important sector examples in Italy and perhaps in Europe.
Information about the “Gioacchino Capelletti” Model Railway Collection
Garavelle, 2
06012 Città di Castello (Perugia)
0758552119
a.chiapponi@alice.it
https://www.cdcnet.net
Source: MIBACT
