Collicola Palace Visual Art Gallery – Carandente Museum The Museo Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive is located in the historical center of Spoleto, inside Palazzo Collicola, which occupies the entire western side of the homonymous square. Palazzo Collicola was one of the most important patrician edifices of the town, built between 1717 and 1730 by the architect Romano Sebastiano Cipriani, and the residence of the noble Collicola family. After the extinction of this family, the palace was bought by the Municipality of Spoleto in 1939. The Museum of Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive, together with the Collezione Burri, of Città di Castello, is the most important museum of contemporary art in the region. A lively museum, an active pole of attraction for contemporary art, it hosts the legacy of the Art critic Giovanni Carandente and the works of the Spoleto Prize on the first floor, while the temporary exhibitions are hosted on the second floor. The Library, part of the same donation, containing more than 20 thousand volumes of contemporary arts, is not to be missed. The museum, inaugurated in 2000 and reorganized in 2010, occupies the rooms of the ground floor and those of the first floor. Three main sections are arranged in the 15 rooms of the ground floor. The Collection Carandente, which includes Italian and international artists of worldwide fame, is preserved there. The works of Alexander Calder, Henri Moore, Ettore Colla, Nino Franchina and Pietro Consagra are part of the collection. Another group of works executed by artists of the “Informal Naturalism” current were acquired through the Spoleto Prize (1953-1968). A further section of the collection consists of donations from artists and art collectors along with purchases by the Municipality. Among these, the nucleus of works dedicated to the sculptor Leonardo Leoncillo from Spoleto stands out: there are sketches; sculptures; ceramics and majolica, which arrived at the museum starting in the 1980s. Rooms dedicated to the temporary exhibitions are on the first floor. In the summer of 1962, Spoleto was the protagonist of a legendary event, which had never happened before in the history of contemporary sculpture. The exhibition “Sculture nella città”—Sculptures in Town—was organized, by the initiative of Giovanni Carandente. The streets and squares of the historical center of Spoleto were filled with 104 sculptures realized by 54 of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century, among them Alexander Calder, author of the Teodelapio—the first stable monumental sculpture of the American artist is still in place in front of the Train Station today.