Museo del sigillo

The Museum of the Seal was opened to the public in 2000 on the first floor of the Art Palace, neo-medieval building of the twenties realized by Franco Oliva in the city center. The collection on display is the collection of private seals of the spouses Lilian and Euro Capellini, donated some years ago to the town of La Spezia. The Museum offers visitors the most full sphragistics collection that was ever assembled, composed by fifteen hundred cores and cavities of seals, dating from the fourth millennium BC to this day. The seals are from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Pre-Columbian America, China, Japan and areas of Islamic influence. The most representative section of the Museum consists of Europe and North America. The route is divided in chronological and geographical order, since the specimens of the fourth millennium BC, Egypt and Roman imperial. The period between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is very important for the production of seals: numerous are those created by French masters among which those Art Nouveau crystal and glass made by Ren Lalique. There is the presence of ecclesiastical seals from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. In the second room are the gold seals including achievements goldsmith tsars, Faberg. Finally, in the third room, there are the seals products in the East in a period from the fourth century BC to the contemporaneity.