“Luigi Marzoli” Arms and Armor Museum
The Luigi Marzoli Arms and Armor Museum houses one of the finest European collections of antique arms and armour, testifying to Brescia’s longstanding weaponry tradition.
Inside the fourteenth-century Mastio Visconteo, one of the oldest buildings in the Castle, is the Luigi Marzoli Arms Museum. This museum was inaugurated in 1988 after a series of restorations that revealed Visconti frescoes with the rare coat of arms of Luchino and Giovanni Visconti, fifteenth-century Venetian frescoes, and remains of a Roman temple and oil warehouses, on top of which the medieval building was erected.
The museum contains all types of weapons (white, defensive, firearms and artillery), starting with a selection of Lombard weapons (6th–8th centuries) discovered in the Brescia area and several rare examples of weapons dating from the 11th to the 14th centuries. The rest of the exhibition illustrates Brescia’s long weaponry tradition through a display of over 700 pieces, testifying to the technological and artistic progress achieved by Brescian and local craftsmen from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century. The collections also include pieces that have been part of the Christian Museum collections since the nineteenth century.
