Museum of Seals

The Palazzina delle Arti (literally, the small building of arts) was designed around the 20’s and initially it was supposed to be the Health Department. The openings with pointed arches and the ceramic semi-domes placed above the windows are clear marks of its Neo-medieval style. The building is ideally connected to, even if not historically, the Convento di San Francesco da Paola (Saint Francis of Paola’s Monastery) next door, today hosting the Museo Civico “Lia” (Lia Civic Museum).

Following the opening of the Lia Museum, the project for the requalification of this old Monastery started, as this will become a place for the Special Library of Art and Archeology, permanent exposition of the seal collections, and for other temporary exhibitions and meetings.

The collection of seals comes from Mr. and Mrs. Capellini’s donation to the Borough of La Spezia, and is probably the biggest specialist seals collection in the world. Seals were born because of the need to confirm ownership of a document and to generally attest to its juridical validity. They are tools which have always been greatly used throughout history.

For this reason, the La Spezia museum collects and sorts seals of differt eras and origins, from ancient Egyptian to matrices produced in China, Tibet and Nepal; from the examples made in the West during the Middle Ages to the fluid, elegant lines of the Art Nouveau examples.