Museo del Tessuto e della Tappezzeria “Vittorio Zironi”

Founded by the upholstery art master Vittorio Zironi and previously hosted in some rooms of Palazzo Salina Brazzetti in 1966, in 1990 the Museum was moved to Villa Spada also known as Villa Ravone after the name of the nearby river. The collections, initiated by the founder right after the war with the help of some colleagues and collectors, included at the beginning fabrics, accessories, braids and several tools used over the centuries for upholstery work. Later on the collection was extended to finished products like dresses, embroidered objects, drawings, flags, banners, archival finds and a library specialized in fabrics and interior decoration. The main asset of the museum - donated by the Zironi family to the Municipality of Bologna in 2016 – is the diverse origin of its more than six thousand fabric samples and the time line they represent. The most ancient samples are the Coptic ones (Egypt) coming from some funeral sets of the period between the IV and XII century. However, the largest part of the collection is made of velvets, lampases, damasks, brocades, tele bandera, taffetas, liserée, gobelines, made by important manufacturers, both local and foreign, between the XVI and XIX century. Also the Eastern fabrics are precious: Japanese, Persian and Caucasian but also Egyptian and Turkish, including a rich collection of ottoman caftans of the XVIII-XIX century period. Other important collections are made of robes and liturgical sets dating back between the XVIII and the XX century; the hats and dresses made by famous milliners’ and tailors’ shops, not only from urban areas, in the period between the XIX and the XX century; the embroidered artifacts, both Eastern and Italian like Aemilia Ars (Bologna) and Ranieri of Sorbello (Perugia), illustrating craftsmanship skills likely to re-adapt ancient techniques to the beginning of the XX century. In some rooms there are also some fabric production tools like a loom dating back to the end of the XIV century and one from the XVIII century, to which was later applied the Jacquard system with perforated cards. More recently the museum stood out for its impressive in-house restoration lab.