Middle Ages

The Medieval Section

The Medieval Section is located on the ground floor of the southern wing of the Palazzo Volpi. It houses sculptures and frescoes that cover a time period from the end of the Sixth to the Fourteenth century. The materials come from various buildings in the city of Como and they are precious evidence of a particularly lively and fertile period for the Lariano ("Lake Como") territory.

The most significant increase on the number of art pieces occurred in the first decades of the museum life at Palazzo Giovio.

Among the early art pieces are the gothic frescoes from the female Benedictine convent of Santa Margherita di Como.
Visitors can admire an unusual nucleus of Romanesque stucco-work from the church of Sant'Abbondio, the solar clock from the Acquafredda monastery near Lenno and a series of Romanesque-Gothic capitals.

The section, ordered according to a mainly chronological itinerary and attentive to the aggregations connected to the origin of the pieces, the artwork takes the visitor through the Romanesque portal of the church of Santa Margherita and is immediately introduced by a teaching room that documents the techniques of processing and reuse of stone artifacts, an activity that  marks the "importance of artisans work for the culture of the territory.
The rest of the itinerary is divided into three chronological phases: the Early Middle Ages; the Eleventh and Twelfth centuries; and finally to the XIII and XIV centuries.

During the preparation phase, the opportunity to exhibit the fresco cycle torn from the Romanesque apses of the church of San Giorgio in Borgo Vico di Como was added.

Within the individual rooms, the emphasis given to a single material or aggregation in small groups is aimed at proposing themes, which are then developed in the teaching panels.