Museo nazionale di San Matteo

The history of the Museum come from the culture of antiquarian recovery in Pisa, since the eighteenth century, which coincides with the first group of paintings of "primitives" collected by the canon of the Cathedral Sebastian Zucchetti (1796). The collection left in use for the School of Design, will increase in the next century of other paintings and sculptures recovered through the acquisitions made to the State during the Napoleonic era and post-unification, with the gradual convergence in the local Academy of Fine Arts. Only in 1893, Iginio Benvenuto Supino gives to the Convent of San Francisco a new prestige as Civic Museum, and he draws up a valuable catalog. In 1949, finally comes the new National Museum, which houses the collections of the former Museum with further increases and settles in the restored convent of San Matteo in Soarta.