Castello Odescalchi, Bracciano

Administrative and representative center of the important families that owned it, the Castle tells its six centuries of history through ancient weapons, furnishings and paintings, books and manuscripts, decorations and frescoes.

Open to the public since 1952 by the will of Prince Livio IV Odescalchi, today the Castle of Bracciano constitutes a dynamic reality, which combines its museum vocation with an intense activity in the field of event organization.

The rooms of the Odescalchi Castle of Bracciano preserve a rich collection of art objects gathered by Prince Baldassarre Odescalchi from the second half of the nineteenth century. A lover of the arts and refined connoisseur, he was close to the international and progressive cultural environment that animated post-unification Rome. The interest in decorative arts, which had led the prince to promote and support the foundation of the Artistic Industrial Museum of Rome, also manifested itself in the massive campaign of purchases aimed at restoring the furnishings of the Castle dispersed during the French domination. The precious collection of ceramics attests to the attention paid to Italian maiolica, especially from the sixteenth century, which characterized the nineteenth century. The busts of the twelve Caesars, the rare sixteenth-century hourglass, the Sicilian wrought iron bed from the eighteenth century complete, together with many other objects, the collections of the Castle gathered by Prince Baldassarre with the will to make his historic residence a true museum, where objects were capable of dialoguing with the architecture that hosts them, evoking for the visitor the taste, customs, and splendors of an ancient fifteenth-century castle.