home
/
Discover Arezzo
/
Museums and House-Museums
/
Fraternita Palace Museum

Fraternita Palace Museum

Museo Palazzo di Fraternita

Guardian of the city’s history, always at the side of the people of Arezzo

The Fraternita dei Laici, a mutual aid society whose activity can be traced back to the mid-13th century, is one of the oldest city institutions engaged in charitable works. During the Lorraine era, it became Arezzo’s main cultural and political reference point, maintaining its social function to this day.
The Palace of Fraternita, overlooking Piazza Grande, is set in the context of the ancient city. In fact, the main economic and mercantile activities took place in this square, as witnessed by the shops located under the Loggias designed by Giorgio Vasari.
The façade of the Palace of Fraternita, a harmonious synthesis of Gothic and Renaissance styles, saw the great protagonists of art at work, including Spinello Aretino who, with his fresco of Christ in Pietà above the stone portal, recounts the art of Arezzo in the Middle Ages. The stone group of the Madonna of Mercy and Saints by Bernardo Rossellino bears witness to 15th-century sculpture, while the 16th century is marked by the chimes of the famous moon-phase clock by Felice da Fossato, housed inside the bell sail designed by Vasari.
The Palace houses the Museum, which until 1935 housed the institution’s ancient collections, coming from donations, testamentary bequests and public commissions from the 14th to the 19th century, which were in part intended to form the nucleus of the library and civic museums that later became state-owned. A large part of the works including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and antique furniture still remain in the palace today and are the focus of the exhibition.