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Where is
What it is and where it is
The Civic Museum of Oriental Art is located in Palazzetto Leo, an 18th-century building in the center of Trieste. The building was donated to the municipality of Trieste in the 1950s by Countess Margherita Nugent and became a museum venue in 2001. A great many objects of oriental provenance are preserved here, gathered in a single collection from various private collections, left by prominent figures such as Carlo Zanella, a former agent of Austrian Lloyd in Hong Kong, and Anna Segre Sartorio, the last descendant of the noble Sartorio family.
Why it is special
It is a small oriental art museum that tells the naval and commercial history of the city of Trieste through the collection of objects from the Far East. Thus not just a classic art museum, but a historical and trade museum.
Not to be missed
If the Orient tickles your fancy, you will find bread for your teeth here: dozens of marvelous Japanese woodcuts, including an original copy of Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave of Kanagawa; two splendid Japanese Samurai suits of armor; traditional Chinese clothing, including one that belonged to the Imperial family... And an archaeological collection from Karakorum and dating back to Ardito Desio 's famous K2 expedition , in which the fusion of Hellenistic characters and Oriental subjects hints at Alexander the Great's passage to the East.
A bit of history
In the second half of the 1800s Trieste, due to its maritime and commercial vocation, looked to the Levant: India, East Asia, China and Japan. Thus a taste for exotic collecting spread among the aristocratic elite and the emerging middle class of Trieste.
Curiosities
Also included in the collections are special woodcuts such as shunga, traditionally featuring explicit erotic scenes, and woodcuts depicting war scenes dating from World War II, part of the collection left to the City of Trieste by Diego de Henriquez, to whom an entire museum in the city is dedicated.
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