Description of the attraction
The Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art, located in Genoa, is one of the most important museums in Italy and Europe in general, dedicated to the art of Asian countries. It contains a collection of 15 thousand items collected by the Italian engraver and artist Edoardo Kiossone, who lived in Japan for 23 years. In Tokyo, he was engaged in transactions with securities, but in the last years of his life, thanks to his broad outlook and education, as well as his interest in the history of the Land of the Rising Sun and its culture, he became an avid collector of Japanese art. Chiossone later bequeathed his collection to the people of Genoa, where she arrived in 1899, packed in hundreds of boxes. Initially, exotic items could be seen in the Palazzo Dell Academia in Piazza Ferrari, and then, after several moves, the collection was housed in a small Villa Dinegro, where it is located to this day. In the early 1970s, the municipality of Genoa purchased several more exhibits for the museum - Chinese and Siamese sculptures. Within a couple of years of operation, the museum gained worldwide fame: in 1989, Japan asked for a loan of some of its exhibits in order to arrange an exhibition in Tokyo, and in 1991 the Kiossone Museum organized a large exhibition in London called "An Italian in Japan".
Today in the Museum of Oriental Art you can see a wide variety of exhibits brought from Japan, China, Tibet and Burma - Buddhist sculptures, porcelain dishes, bronze vessels, masks, samurai weapons, helmets and drawings. All of this is displayed inside Villa Dinegro in the heart of Genoa, close to Piazza Corvetto and the historic Via Garibaldi.
