This unique house-museum offers the opportunity to immerse oneself in the world of its creator, Captain Enrico Alberto D’Albertis, who generously gifted it to the City of Genova upon his death in 1932. Through his adventures across land and sea between the 19th and the 20th centuries, the Captain gathered stories and artefacts and brought them back to be housed in his house, inspired by ‘curiosity cabinets’ and the colonial trophies commonly collected at the time. 

The museum’s collections, presented in a sequence of evocative alcoves furnished according to the “revival” style of the time, are composed of ethnographic and archaeological materials gathered by the Captain across five continents; to these are added those collected by the Captain’s cousin Luigi Maria, the first European man to explore the Fly River in New Guinea (1872-1878).

Entering the 16th-century bastion on which the castle stands, visitors can follow a route that takes them through further extra-European collections acquired by the city of Genova in the last century, including archaeological materials from Central and South America and ethnographic materials from Canada donated by the US Catholic Mission Association following the exposition for the Columbian celebrations of 1892. 

All these materials, displayed with a thoughtful, contemporary exhibition design, have been revisited and contextualised through ongoing dialogue with their source communities around the world.

Find out more about the initiatives of the D’Albertis Museum at their Website and Facebook channel.