Museo di Casa Vasari – Vasari’s home

The Casa del Vasari is the attractive house where the Arezzo-born painter, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) lived and worked. Vasari was not merely a Mannerist painter and architect but author of The Lives of the Artists (1550). This celebrated book, which documented the life and work of his contemporaries, and near contemporaries, is treated with reverence. Vasari is often dubbed the world’s first art historian. This home was built for Vasari and decorated with frescoes of the artists he most admired. Vasari’s home is much as he left it. The 500th anniversary of his birth was celebrated with much pomp in Arezzo in 2011, including the painstaking restoration of a Vasari altarpiece before visitors’ very eyes.

There’s a saying that Tuscany is `equally blessed by the genius of man and nature.’ History has proved the proverb, with the greatest of the region’s greats achieving worldwide fame. Vasari is just one of the greats from Arezzo. Other major local figures include Petrarch, the classical Italian poet, and Guido d’Arezzo, who invented musical notation. Then there was Maecenas, the Roman patron of the arts who encouraged the work of ¬Virgil and Horace. To continue the Vasari trail, visit the neighbouring Museo Statale d’Arte Medioevale e Moderna, housed in the 15th-century Palazzo Bruni. The collection features frescoes and examples of the Arezzo goldsmiths’ work, alongside paintings by Vasari and modern works by local artists.

Address: Via XX Settembre 55, Arezzo
Web: www.giorgiovasari-ticketoffice.it/en/