Museum Palazzo Coronini

The Coronini Cronberg Palace, today head office of the homonymous Foundation established in accordance with the will of its last owner, count Guglielmo Coronini Cronberg (1905-1990), is a 16th century historic mansion situated in the centre of Gorizia, in the old borough of Grafenberg. Strolling through the fifteen rooms of the museum including the one where in 1836 Charles X, the last Bourbon king of France, lived for a short time and died, as if by magic the visitor is driven back in time, thanks to the warm and attractive atmosphere of the 16th and 17th century furnishing of the halls on the ground floor, and the charm of the luxurious 18th century sitting rooms, of the Empire and 19th century style halls on the noble floor. Valuable furniture, silverware, china, crystal, lace, carpets, rugs, photographs, portraits and objects of everyday use recreate the atmosphere of a house still lived, letting us perceive in every room the presence of its old owners and above all of the last descendant of the family, count Guglielmo Coronini Cronberg (1905-1990), a man of great learning and a passionate collector."The Coronini Cronberg palace together with its private chapel [...] will form an intangible, unalterable museum, open to the public to perpetual memory of my family and to ornament and attraction of my Town", so the gentleman wrote in his will, clearly showing his intention, that is, by keeping the historical settings unaltered, he meant to preserve in his house the character of a large noble mansion concerning its architectural unity, furnishing and park, Guglielmo Coronini’s generous and farsighted project was his greatest sign of love for his town: "I entrust all the inhabitants of Gorizia, contemporary and future, with the destiny of this foundation, its life and independence, the poetry of its park, its development as a Gorizia cultural centre", as he wrote in one of the fundamental quotation of his last will. Inside the palace, among family memories and antiques, the visitor can also admire numerous important paintings such as works of Rubens, Alessandro Magnasco, Giambattista Langetti, Rosalba Carriera, Antonio Canova, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Vladimir L. Borovikovsky, alternated with sculptures of Bertel Thorvaldsen, Giuseppe Ceracchi and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. Outstanding are the family archives (thousands of public and private documents dating from the 13th century to the 20th century) and the book legacy: the family library is composed by more than 23.000 valuable books among which psalters, incunabula, 16th century books and the famous De Ludo Scachorum, a treatise on the game of chess written in about 1500 in the vernacular by Luca Pacioli, never published and presumed lost for five centuries. The palace is surrounded by a beautiful five hectare English-style park conceived on different levels where the visitor can discover important archeological finds from Aquileia, an Art Nouveau little temple, rare and precious plants: ashes, lindens, cedars of Himalaya, Atlante and Libanon, exotic plants like palms, Japanese medlars, bamboos and a hundred year old cork oak. Fondazione Palazzo Coronini Cronberg Onlus Viale XX Settembre, 14 34170 Gorizia GO Tel. +39.0481.533485