MUSEO DELLE CERAMICHE DI CASTELLI

The Franciscan convent lying on the highest part of the town has been since 1984 the seat of the Museum of Ceramics. The exhibition is distributed on two storeys. The ground floor contains the archaeological section, made up of amphorae, Etruscan vases and earthenware dated from the fourth to the first century B.C. The upper level puts on display the long history of Castelli's ceramic art: from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, with majolica tiles from an old country-chapel and sixteenth-century pitchers. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are unquestionably a triumph of Castelli's production: at that time the well-known masters of the Grue and Gentile families lived and operated, painting magnificent historiated ceramics. After a standstill during the early nineteenth-century, the majolica handicraft flourished again drawing near the porcelain decorations, in vogue at that time.