A New Home for the Casamonti Collection in San Niccolò

The news reached us early, remember? At the Savoy Talks, the celebrated Florentine collector Roberto Casamonti had hinted that his collection would grow, with the acquisition of an exhibition space in the San Niccolò district.

The neighborhood, a few steps from the Ponte Vecchio, is a blend of imposing medieval and Renaissance palaces mixed with modest little houses; it runs from the slopes of the hills down toward the countryside and, lower still, looks out over the left bank of the Arno.

Here stands Palazzo San Giorgio. Once the stables of Palazzo Serristori, later transformed into the monumental Palazzo San Giorgio overlooking the Lungarno. Bought by Mg Property, the company of Marco Casamonti — who holds a 67% stake, the rest belonging to his Archea studio partner Giovanni Polazzi — the prestigious building has been restored and is now ready for a double function: headquarters of the architecture studio and museum exhibition space.

The “Collezione Casamonti” association for art and culture will open the new exhibition venue at Palazzo San Giorgio on Monday, September 28, 2026. The move into the historic building marks a new phase of the cultural project envisioned by the gallerist Roberto Casamonti and presents the art collection in its entirety for the first time: a journey through Italian and international art from the 19th century to the present day.

The museum project involved reopening, at street level, wide arcades closed off with glass, evoking the idea of a great open-air space. Here a selection from the personal collection of the founder of Tornabuoni Arte has been installed — works until now shown at Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, in Piazza Santa Trinita, where they were arranged in two exhibition cores presented in rotation. Palazzo San Giorgio now hosts the new installation, reworking the display into a single continuous path.

The Casamonti Collection today brings together around 250 works by masters of Italian and international art. Spread across 28 rooms on two levels of the palazzo, the path winds through different movements, generations, and languages, alternating historical groupings, dialogues between artists, and in-depth focuses on the major stylistic and artistic currents of the 20th century and the present.

The exhibition favors dialogue between Italian and international works, highlighting relationships, influences, and continuities in the evolution of art — without shying away from their differences and distances, as testimony to the changeability of emotion and the human condition.

“The opening of Palazzo San Giorgio is a moment of great importance for me,” says Roberto Casamonti. “Bringing together such a wide selection of works means sharing with the public not only extraordinary pieces, but also a personal and cultural journey that continues to evolve.“

From the experiences of Italian painting between the 19th and 20th centuries to the historic international avant-gardes — taking in Futurism and Metaphysical Painting, Cubism and abstraction — the itinerary crosses the major artistic movements of the second half of the 20th century, including Art Informel, Spatialism, Arte Povera, Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art, Graffiti Art, Transavanguardia, Video Art, and Performance Art.

The artists on view include, among others, Giovanni Boldini, Giacomo Balla, Giorgio de Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Bill Viola, Marina Abramović, Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor, and Maurizio Cattelan.

Bruno Corà, art historian and President of the Fondazione Burri, notes: “The new venue at Palazzo San Giorgio in Florence — beyond showcasing the individual works and bringing out the poetic connections and linguistic echoes among them, thanks to larger spaces and carefully designed routes — holds a broader repertoire of creations open to further additions and substitutions. It is a truly dynamic collection.”

The project springs from Roberto Casamonti’s wish to share with the city of Florence a collection built over more than fifty years of activity. From its origins, and all the more with the opening of the new spaces, the “Collezione Casamonti” consolidates its place among the leading private institutions devoted to contemporary art in Italy, contributing to the dialogue between historical heritage and international research.

With the new venue, the aim is to foster ever-wider participation by the Florentine, national, and international public in the languages of contemporary art through cultural mediation and education, along with talks and deeper explorations for visitors.

“The new goal of the Casamonti Collection is to become a place of exchange, research, and participation, increasingly open to different audiences, to encourage a direct relationship with contemporary culture and art,” notes Jonathan Paonetti, who has been entrusted with the direction of the exhibition path.

Info: Palazzo San Giorgio, Lungarno Serristori 17 — Florence. Tel. (+39) 055 602030 · info@collezionecasamonti.it · www.collezionecasamonti.it