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St. Augustine - Towards a new museum

Franco Albini's staircase

A room of the Museum of Saint Augustine

Bronze Bell - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Saint Augustine's triangular Cloister - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Manfredino da Pistoia, Saint Michael Archangel - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Saint Augustine Church Bell Tower - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Masculine Portrait - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Simone Boccanegra's Sepulchral Monument, First doge of Genoa - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

A room of the museum - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Maestro Giano, Gryphon - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Sepulchral Tombstone of Simonetta and Percivalle Lercari - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Blessing Angel - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Madonna with Angels - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Luca Cambiaso, Tritons' Battle - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Blessing Angel - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Saint Augustine's triangular Cloister - ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Campionese Sculptor, Lying funerary statue of Archbishop Iacopo da Varagine -ph. Carlo Alberto Alessi

Percorso espositivo - (ph. Fabio Bussalino)

Formelle da San Francesco di Castelletto, XIV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Scultura sepolcrale di Jacopo da Varagine, fine XIII secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Sarcofago di Pagano Doria, XIV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Sarcofago o lastra, XIV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Percorso espositivo (ph. Fabio Bussalino)

Ancona XV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Polittico in marmo da Santa Maria della Pace, XV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Sovrapporta in pietra di promontorio, XV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Cuspide con Eterno benedicente, XV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Capitello da San Tommaso, XI secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Lastra con Daniele e i Leoni (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Giovanni Pisano, Margherita di Brabante - particolare (ph. Fabio Bussalino)

Epigrafe del 1378 da San Domenico (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Stemmi da San Domenico (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Grifone, XIV secolo (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Lapide Percivalle e Simonetta Lercari (ph. Simone Lezzi)

Sovrapporta con San Giorgio - XV secolo (ph. Luigino Visconti)

Foresta di capitelli (ph. Fabio Bussalino)

Sant'Agostino: a Treasure in the Heart of the City

The Museum of Sant'Agostino is entering a new phase, the third, of its life. Inaugurated in 1939 as the Museum of Ligurian Architecture and Sculpture, heavily damaged by the war, and reopened in 1984 in the spaces designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, the museum now requires significant works.

These interventions – whose project is presented in the ticket office spaces – include the complete replacement of the large windows, structural and plant adaptation, the creation of new spaces for reception, and a renewed museum arrangement. In this accessible and updated museum, the thousands of works dating from Antiquity to the 19th century, which constitute the heritage of Sant'Agostino and, in a sense, the monumental archive of the city, will be enhanced to the fullest. The planned works will continue in the coming months; however, starting from theYear of Medieval Genoa, the Sant'Agostino complex has reopened, offering, in the spaces of the triangular cloister and the church, a selection of the most significant medieval pieces from the museum. In the largest preserved Gothic church in the city, a panorama of the multifaceted reality of medieval Genoa will be offered, when a peripheral center of Northern Italy became one of the greatest powers in the Mediterranean.

With the opening of the Museum's deposits to the public, thousands of artifacts are made accessible thanks to a monthly program of guided tours. Inside, the remains of city monuments such as fragments of the Church of San Silvestro, those of the Church of Santa Maria in Passione, the Janus of Gian Giacomo and Guglielmo della Porta from the small temple in Piazza Sarzano are preserved. Additionally, a large part of the main altar of Saints James and Philip, the Madonna from the shrine on Paganini's house in Via Madre di Dio, as well as a substantial collection of corbels featuring monstrous figures, evidence of the high-quality private architecture in Genoa between the 16th and 17th centuries, are also housed there.

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Although the museum contains a wide variety of objects - sculpture, painting and applied arts artifacts – it was created and designed to house works of sculpture. Natural light, in Franco Albini's brilliant design, brings out of the carved stone ever changing and surprising aspects, not only with the change of the seasons, but even the time of the day. The Museums greatest treasure is a sculpture: what remains of the sepulchral monument of the great fourteenth-century master Giovanni Pisano that the emperor Henry VII commissioned in memory of his young wife Margaret of Brabant who died and was buried in Genoa.

Over the course of its history, more than three decades, the museum's collection has been transformed, enriching itself with other evocative artefacts from churches and monasteries that, sadly, no longer exist, as is the case with the frescoes or altarpieces. However, there is also a painting section with paintings on wood from the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance. Among the works of applied art, the admirable Assunta in ivory, various ceramics, and the precious Pallium of San Lorenzo, a unique piece also due to its dimensions (almost three metres), both its origins and history are known.