ROOM 6 – THE STUDY

The rooms on the second floor are arranged along a corridor. The plastered walls and ceilings are vaulted and decorated with floral and geometric motifs, while the floors are in terracotta. The rooms, which contain the couple’s private quarters and valuable furnishings, offer a reconstruction of the domestic atmosphere of the Spontini home. Furthermore, at the end of the corridor a door conceals a small curiosity: a basic bathroom, which was very rare in houses of the time, which usually had them outside.

The small study is decorated with a few linear motifs in keeping with the neoclassical style. The desk, leather armchairs and wardrobe are typical of the 19th century.

The study also houses two 19th-century travel trunks that belonged to Spontini: the smaller one is French, as evidenced by the label of the Colin factory in Paris; the larger one is probably Prussian, as evidenced by what remains of the eagle depicted on the back.

On the wall hangs the family tree, drawn up after the composer’s death, which contains an obvious error in the date of birth: 1777 instead of 1774. Next to it is a series of autograph documents containing information gathered and presented to the ecclesiastical and civil courts during the lawsuits brought by Spontini’s cousins to appropriate his capital after his death.

Another painting shows the cadastral map of the Spontini family’s land holdings: the hectares of land owned by the family were inherited in their entirety by the Opere Pie in 1901.