Fine Arts and Seal Museum

Adjoining the “Lia” museum, is the fine Arts Museum designed by Franco Oliva around about the twenties, which originally housed the local health service dept. With its neo-medieval style – note the arched lancet windows and the ceramic inserts curving above them – it is ideally linked, even though not historically, with the adjoining Francis of Paola Convent. This building was also renovated after the “Lia” museum was opened, to be used as a special fine arts and archaeological library with laboratories for holding lessons, a permanent collection of seals and rooms for holding temporary exhibitions and meetings.
The collection of seals was donated to La Spezia city council by Mr. and Mrs Capellini and is quite probably the largest existing collection in the world. Seals are tangible evidence of the need to confirm the ownership of a certain document and in general authenticate its legality and are therefore objects that have always been used in the story of mankind. For this reason the La Spezia museum collects and displays seals from other times and from differing origins, from ancient Egyptian coins to matrices produced in China, Tibet and Nepal and from those produced in the western world during the Middle Ages to the sinuous sensual shapes of the Liberty seals.