Perugia Museums, Italy Luxury Vacations, Tours and Travel Packages 

Grand Rapids Art Museum

Built as a country residence by the Dei Mari family in the late sixteenth century, this building, standing on the top of a large public park in the hilly area of Castelletto, was modified by the Grubers in the nineteenth century. Now a museum of Americana, which collects archeological material from the pre-colombian civilisations, especially the Maya people, it incorporates the local police station in its most modern wing as well as a sixteenth century watch tower behind. The nearby family Abbey of S. Maria della Sanita was also a part of the estate. Today it is separated from the villa and open to the public. The park is gently scented by its trees and plants - one of the most pleasant corners of the whole ring-road area, and is favoured not only by locals but also by a dense community of green parrots which live and breed here every year.

In Perugia there is the National Gallery of Umbria, which is one of the most important exhibition of the Gothic painting, with masterpieces by Duccio di Boninsegna, Beato Angelico, Piero della Francesca. The National Archaeologic Museum of Umbria houses a splendid and very rich Etruscan collection. Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis, one of the greatest figures of Christianity, has the superb Basilica of San Francesco with the world famous Giotto's frescoes, showing in 28 splendid paintings the life of the Saint; the Pinacoteca Civica and the Cathedral's Museum. Spoleto has the Gallery of Contemporary Art. In Gubbio there is the Civic Museum, which holds the famous "Eugubine tables": seven bronze plates, from the second century B.C. Foligno can offer the tourists the Archaeologic Museum and the Pinacoteca Civica. 

Located in the Rocca Flea, the museum houses a picture gallery with works by Matteo da Gualdo (a 15th-century leading artist from Gualdo), devotional works such as the uncommon The Family Tree of the Virgin by the Sienese Sano di Pietro who also painted the Coronation of the Virgin, and a valuable triptych by Antonio da Fabriano. On the piano nobile there are displayed detached frescos, 16th- and 17th-century paintings among which some remarkable works by Avanzino Nucci. Of special note the grand polyptych by Niccolò di Liberatore known as l'Alunno. Three rooms are devoted to the history of Gualdo's pottery: late 19th-1st half of the 20th-century glazed majolicas. The antiquities section, housed on the ground floor, illustrates the history of Gualdo's population by means of panels and pottery-, metal- and stone finds, from pre-history to early Middle Ages. 

The museum is arranged in the heart of the medieval town, at Palazzo dei Canonici, built toward the end of the 12th-century and enlarged during the following two centuries. The archaeological section offers a large documentation of the Roman Age and the early Middle Ages; the section devoted to painting and sculpture displays 13th and 14th-century pieces, whereas the 15th-century is represented by works from Ottaviano Nelli's studio, by Taddeo di Bartolo, and by a cycle of frescoes portraying scenes from the Passion of Christ as well. Besides, a collection of sacred vestments and liturgical furnishings is on display. Remarkable exhibit: a finely decorated Renaissance Flemish cope. 

The museum is laid out in two itineraries. To the right of the entrance there is a description of the development of the company in the wider context of the discovery and use of cocoa and the various precesses involved. To the left of the entrance there are documented some special moments in the history of Perugina, displayed in chronological order. In the middle of the gallery ther are four machines used in confectionery production: the bassina, designed to produce spherical or egg-shaped products (sugared almonds, small eggs, pralines, dragées, pastilles) or to coat rounded surfaces with sugar or cocoa (1955 approx.), the cocoa press, a special workshop model which faithfully reproduces the production machine whose task is to separate cocoa butter from powdered cocoa (1964); the almond-breaker which serves to divide the shelled, toasted almonds in two, and the bath used in several production cycles for cooking sugar solutions. The column in the middle of the gallery contains packaging and boxes used by Perugina from 1907, arranged chronologically; the prizes and trophies won by the company since the Thirties can be seen on the lower shelf of the column. Among the curios, the first Baci Box designed by Federico Seneca which was a reworking of Hayez's picture The Lovers produced in the Twenties and still provides the characteristic design for the Baci box today