Description
Palazzo Zuckermann is a large early 20th-century palace on Corso Garibaldi in Padua, opposite the Musei Civici agli Eremitani. Today it is part of the Musei Civici and houses two museums: the applied arts and the coin collections of the Bottacin Museum.
The palace was built between 1912 and 1914 to a design by the Milanese Filippo Arosio. The façade mixes neoclassical elements, wanted by the client to give it grandeur, with touches of the Liberty style then in fashion. Inside, a Carrara marble staircase rises beneath a wide skylight.
On the ground and first floors, the Museum of Applied Arts displays more than two thousand objects, from the Middle Ages to today: 16th-century ceramics, 18th-century inlaid furniture, men's and women's clothing from the 18th and 19th centuries, silverware, glass, ivories and more than 400 pieces of jewellery.
On the second floor is the Bottacin Museum, with the collections given to the city in 1865 by the Trieste merchant Nicola Bottacin. More than 20,000 coins and medals, from ancient Greece to Rome and Byzantium and on to the modern age, with a section devoted to the coins of the Veneto region.
Among the Bottacin's works of art, the bust of Doge Paolo Renier by Antonio Canova stands out. There are also antique weapons and mementoes of Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, a friend of the collector, and the rooms are meant to recall his villa in Trieste.
The client, Cavaliere Enrico Zuckermann, was an unusual industrialist: his small metalware factory near the station gave employees, on top of their pay, a bonus when profits rose. The palace was meant to face the new «rettifilo», the straight road linking the centre to the station.
Its life has been eventful. After the war the American army used the attic as a gym and set up a radio station on the terrace: on the walls remain sports scenes painted by the soldiers. From 1953 the palace housed the offices of the state telephone company for decades, before becoming a museum.
The palace was built between 1912 and 1914 to a design by the Milanese Filippo Arosio. The façade mixes neoclassical elements, wanted by the client to give it grandeur, with touches of the Liberty style then in fashion. Inside, a Carrara marble staircase rises beneath a wide skylight.
On the ground and first floors, the Museum of Applied Arts displays more than two thousand objects, from the Middle Ages to today: 16th-century ceramics, 18th-century inlaid furniture, men's and women's clothing from the 18th and 19th centuries, silverware, glass, ivories and more than 400 pieces of jewellery.
On the second floor is the Bottacin Museum, with the collections given to the city in 1865 by the Trieste merchant Nicola Bottacin. More than 20,000 coins and medals, from ancient Greece to Rome and Byzantium and on to the modern age, with a section devoted to the coins of the Veneto region.
Among the Bottacin's works of art, the bust of Doge Paolo Renier by Antonio Canova stands out. There are also antique weapons and mementoes of Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, a friend of the collector, and the rooms are meant to recall his villa in Trieste.
The client, Cavaliere Enrico Zuckermann, was an unusual industrialist: his small metalware factory near the station gave employees, on top of their pay, a bonus when profits rose. The palace was meant to face the new «rettifilo», the straight road linking the centre to the station.
Its life has been eventful. After the war the American army used the attic as a gym and set up a radio station on the terrace: on the walls remain sports scenes painted by the soldiers. From 1953 the palace housed the offices of the state telephone company for decades, before becoming a museum.