Experiences
Art and artistic works
Palazzo di Varignana houses artistic works of great value, arrived from different times and places thanks to the eclectic owner who, over the years, has created an impressive private art collection.
Amazement is certainly the first feeling that captures visitors when they enter the Wunderkammer of Palazzo Bentivoglio. A "room of wonders" – as the name suggests – which contains ancient and precious artifacts from the most varied places and times, including findings from the archaeological site of the ancient Roman city of Claterna.
Palazzo Bentivoglio also houses the famous Claterna mosaic, one of the most beautiful and best-preserved ones of northern Italy, loaned by the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna. Made with tiles of white Istrian stone, black Pistoia stone, and various colored stones, the polychrome mosaic now exhibited at Palazzo di Varignana is of seductive beauty and refined workmanship. The Claterna mosaic dates back to the second half of the 1st century B.C.; the refined composition of this floor, found in 1898 and detached – though partially – in 1933 is, still today, the most striking testimony of the wealth achieved by the city of Claterna in the Augustan age.
The private chapel of the palace stores two more pieces of great value: a faithful and very accurate reproduction of the Gregorian Calendar and an oil painting on canvas depicting Pope Gregory XIII conversing with the Committee of great scholars who conceived the new calendar based on the discoveries and measurements made by Nicolaus Copernicus.
Like hidden gems, many other important works of art embellish the resort and reveal themselves to the guest one after the other. Some of them include the mythological-inspired bust “Sulla Riva II” by the famous Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj, the bronze sculpture "Largo Gesto per un massimo spazio" by the Bolognese artist Quinto Ghermandi and the three triptychs, representing the intersection of three triangles, the symbol of evolution and the perfection of the number three, arranged one after the other in a progression towards the sky.
