Tozzoni Palace is a rather rare example of a noble residence excellently preserved not only in its architectural substance but also in its furnishings and objects; the palace offers a rich exhibition path that includes an important art gallery, applied art objects, furniture, family memorabilia, and a collection of ethnographic materials, allowing visitors to appreciate, in a substantially intact setting, the dialogue between the rooms and their fittings, between the structures and the decorations. A relationship sometimes of interpenetration, as in the alcove room or the Empire wing, and sometimes of layering, as in the late nineteenth-century rooms, through a presentation of the ways of living that have succeeded one another over time.
The palace of the Tozzoni counts became a civic museum in 1981, thanks to the will of the last descendant, Sofia Serristori, who wished to donate to the city of Imola an intact and precious testimony of the life of a noble family in a provincial town. The ancient Tozzoni houses were transformed into a palace between 1726 and 1738 by the architect Domenico Trifogli, probably following designs by Alfonso Torreggiani, following examples of eighteenth-century Bolognese noble architecture. The Tozzoni counts equipped their residence with a reception hall and a noble staircase enriched by sculptures by the Flemish artist Janssen. The hall is enhanced by paintings from the family’s rich collection, including standout ovals by Donnini and works by Beccadelli. It separates the two apartments on the piano nobile, both rare and well-preserved examples of the ways of living that have succeeded over time.
The Empire apartment retains the appearance that Giorgio Barbato Tozzoni wished to give it between 1818 and 1819 on the occasion of his marriage to Orsola Bandini, when he commissioned the Faentine artists Pasquale Saviotti and Angelo Bassi respectively for the decoration and the cabinetry of the rooms. The Pope’s lounge and the Red lounge of the Barocchetto apartment feature partly seventeenth-century furnishings with stuccoes and carvings inspired by early eighteenth-century taste; the alcove, instead, set up in 1738 for the wedding between Giuseppe Tozzoni and Carlotta Beroaldi, presents an environment and fittings that harmonize according to the delicate taste of the Emilian barocchetto style.
In the eighteenth century, presumably around 1780, the acquisition of a private art collection, the Pighini, increased the palace’s collections which were partly dispersed; today they amount to about two hundred paintings dating from the late sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. The collection is predominantly Bolognese, featuring Cesi, Passerotti, Lavinia Fontana, and Romagnola, Fenzoni, Giani. However, the Venetian presence is also noted with Giovan Battista Langetti, Pietro Liberi and Antonio Zanchi. The display cabinets in the collection rooms gather prints, medals, ceramics, terracotta objects, family memorabilia, and liturgical furnishings from various family altars. The kitchen and cellars are also highlighted, where farming tools related to the cycles of wheat, hemp, and grapes have been collected, some of which came from Tozzoni estates, the source of their wealth.
Information about Tozzoni Palace
Via Garibaldi, 18,
40026 Imola (Bologna)
0542602609
musei@comune.imola.bo.it
Source: MIBACT
