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Museo Internazionale della Musica

A Rare Treat for Musicians

Room in the museum

The 16th-century Palazzo Sanguinetti was remodelled in the early 19th century, and after 1832, owned by the great tenor Domenico Donzelli. The composer Gioachino Rossini, whose Bologna residence was a few doors down, would often drop by. In 1986, the palace's last owner Eleanora Sanguinetti donated it to the city, suggesting that in honour of her music-loving father that it become a museum and library of music.

Many of its contents come from the renowned music theorist Father Giovanni Battista Martini, who taught counterpoint to the 14-year old Mozart. The museum houses his massive collection of early print music from the 16th-18th centuries, codices, 11,000 opera libretti and letters to and from composers and musicians, forming one of the top collections of its kind in Europe. Thanks to the nous of Martini's successor, Stanislao Mattei, the collection escaped the greedy clutches of Napoleonic expropriators.

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Music

Bologna Museums and Galleries

Text © Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls

Image by Enrico Tabellini, GNU Free Documention License