National Museum of San Matteo

The National Museum of San Matteo is located in the center of Pisa. The history of the Museum starts from the antiquarian recovery culture alive in Pisa since the eighteenth century, which is identified with the first nucleus of "primitive" paintings collected by the canon of the Cathedral Sebastiano Zucchetti (1796). The collection left in use for the School of Drawing, is increased in the following century by other pictorial and sculptural works, also recovered through the acquisitions to the state property made in the Napoleonic and post-unitary era, with the gradual confluence in the local Academy of Fine Arts. Only in 1893 Iginio Benvenuto Supino set up the new prestigious Civic Museum at the convent of San Francesco, of which he also wrote a precious catalog. Finally, in 1949 the new National Museum was born, which houses the collections of the former Civic Museum with further additions and settles in the restored convent of San Matteo in Soarta. Of the ancient medieval monastery (11th century) today only some of the original structures are identifiable, mainly in the internal rooms. In any case, in the mid-sixteenth century, the convent underwent modifications, as revealed by the date in the cloister, with Tuscan sandstone columns and capitals. At the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth century, the current entrance façade to the museum, overlooking the Lungarno, probably dates back to neoclassical inspiration.