The museum opened to the public in 2008 in the former Jesuit College of the Canopoleno, an historical building in the centre of Sassari built by the archbishop of Oristano Antonio Canopolo between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. Acquired by the State in the first half of the 19th century, the building was restored in the 90s of the 20th century to hold the valuable state artistic patrimony received through donations and bequests. The Pinacoteca shows the art collections Sanna and Tomè (this last previously kept in the storehouses of the National Archaeological Museum G.A. Sanna) and a large number of works, including ten contemporary paintings acquired with the Panicali Battaglia donation. The patrimony of the museum is mafe up of more than 490 paintings, sculptures and artefacts dating from a period between the Medieval age and the mid- twentieth century, related to different schools and local, Italian and European artists from the end of the 14th century. Worth mentioning are the triptych by Mariotto di Nardo from Florence (documented between 1394 and 1424), the works by the so- called Maestro di Ozieri (half of the 16th century) and the Maddalena by Andrea Vaccaro from Naples (1604-1670). The most significant sections are dedicated to nineteenth/early twentieth- century Sardinian artists (Giovanni Marghinotti, the largest collection in Sardinia, Antonio Ballero, Filippo Figari, Giuseppe Biasi, Carmelo Floris, Pietro Antonio Manca, Mario Delitala, Stanis Dessy, Eugenio Tavolara), and a graphic section with valuable works by Giuseppe Biasi and Stanis Dessy. Now the museum is being restored, so only a selection of seventeenth/eighteenth- century works, divided by chronology and theme, are exhibited. Nevertheless the most important paintings are visible on the museum web site.