The Museum

This building was erected in the mid-15^th century as the residence of the representative of the Republic of Venice in Lonato, a territory which was under Venetian domination. Lonato was submitted to the domination of the Republic of Venice from 1441 for almost 350 years, interrupted only by the short government of the marquise Francesco Gonzaga (from 1509 to 1516). The House of the Podestà or chief magistrate belonged to Venice until Napoleon gave Venice to Austria, the House of Podestà became Austrian property and was turned into a military barracks and later to the town hall of Lonato which didn’t care about the building.

In 1906 the lawyer and liberal deputy Ugo Da Como purchased the house at a public auction. He was aware of the historic importance of the place and he submitted it to a radical restoration realized by the greatest architect of Brescia: Antonio Tagliaferri (1835-1909).

The client’s aim was to give back the ancient dignity to the Venetian building, furnishing it with a series of appropriate furnitures for a House-museum where to live according to a very common 19^th-20^th century fashion.

The house was dwelled until 1941 by Ugo Da Como, who died in Lonato and the wife Maria Glisenti, who died in 1944.

The identity of this bourgeois abode has kept unchanged until today.

The House of Podestà is a real “house library” which keeps a collection of around 50.000 volumes, this can be counted among the most important private collections of the northern of Italy.