Accorsi-Ometto Museum

The Accorsi-Ometto Museum is a private decorative arts museum in Turin, northern Italy, located at Via Po 55. Inaugurated on 2 December 1999, it holds the distinction of being chronologically the first decorative arts museum in Italy. The institution preserves and displays the collections assembled by the renowned Turinese antiquarian Pietro Accorsi (1891-1982), later expanded by Giulio Ometto, and serves as a cultural venue for temporary exhibitions and scholarly events.

The museum's origins trace to the legacy of Pietro Accorsi, who died on 26 October 1982. In his will, he named Giulio Ometto universal heir of his properties, objects, and real estate, with the binding condition that these assets form the core of a museum collection managed by the Fondazione Accorsi. Ometto, who became president for life of the foundation, immediately set about enlarging the collection beginning in 1986. The initial bequest, comprising furnishings, porcelain, sculpture, and furniture drawn largely from Villa Paola and Accorsi's other residences, could fill only seven of the building's twenty-seven rooms. Through Ometto's further acquisitions, the collection grew to exceed three thousand pieces, enabling a fuller museographic display. He also oversaw the meticulous restoration and restructuring of the seventeenth-century building, working with a team of craftsmen and restorers coordinated by architect Fassio in consultation with the Soprintendenza. The project spanned many years and included converting the former porter's lodge where young Pietro Accorsi had lived into the museum ticket office, while adapting the piano nobile for exhibition use. Following Ometto's death in 2019, his personal collection was incorporated into the museum, and the foundation was renamed Fondazione Museo Accorsi-Ometto.

The museum's holdings now number more than three thousand objects, concentrated primarily in the decorative arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with particular emphasis on Piedmontese and French production. The installation, personally curated by Giulio Ometto in 1999, follows the taste of Pietro Accorsi, who favored the refined aesthetic of the eighteenth century. The display is organized into two principal sections. The first presents tableware and objets de vertu in vitrines, including Baccarat crystal, silverware, snuffboxes, and porcelain from Meissen, Frankenthal, and Sèvres. The second section reconstructs the ambience of an aristocratic residence through furnished rooms, replicating the atmosphere of Accorsi's own Villa Paola in Moncalieri. This arrangement showcases French, Venetian, and Piedmontese furniture alongside tapestries and eighteenth-century paintings, reflecting a decorative style that remained fashionable in Turin's leading households for approximately fifty years.

Among the museum's most celebrated pieces is the secrétaire-cabinet by Pietro Piffetti, dated 1738, executed in rare woods with ivory and tortoiseshell inlay. This trumeau, housed in the dedicated Piffetti room, is regarded as a masterpiece of Piedmontese cabinetmaking and has been described as the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world. The double-body cabinet bears Piffetti's signature and date, representing the apex of regional craftsmanship in the early eighteenth century.

The museum occupies a historic building on Via Po constructed in 1684 to designs by Amedeo di Castellamonte, architect to the Savoy court. The site originated in 1616 as a complex built by the Padri Antoniani, comprising a palace and the church of Sant'Antonio Abate, which became one of the order's most prestigious houses in Piedmont and Italy. In the mid-eighteenth century, architect Bernardo Vittone remodeled the church, choir, bell tower, and presbytery decoration. After the suppression of the Antonian order in 1776, the complex passed to the Opera della Mendicità Istruita and subsequently, in the nineteenth century, to the Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro. The painter Antonio Fontanesi lived and died in the building on 17 April 1882; a commemorative plaque marks the entrance. Pietro Accorsi's father served as custodian of the palace from 1901, and the family resided in a small flat overlooking the courtyard. Accorsi himself rented the piano nobile apartment in 1927 and purchased the entire palace in 1956, making it the center of his antiquarian activity.

The Accorsi-Ometto Museum is situated at Via Po 55 in Turin, Italy. It operates as a private museum under the Fondazione Museo Accorsi-Ometto, accessible to the public through its twenty-seven rooms covering approximately two thousand square meters. The institution maintains an active cultural program, hosting temporary exhibitions and events focused on decorative arts and historical-artistic heritage since its foundation. Information on current access, hours, and programming is available through the museum's website at http://www.fondazioneaccorsi-ometto.it, and the collection is also represented on Google Arts & Culture.