Museo delle sinopie

Museum Pisa, Italy

The sinopias of the frescoes in the monumental cemetery are kept in the Museo delle sinopia in Piazza del Duomo in Pisa. The frescoes, the work of various artists, including Buffalmacco, Andrea Bonaiuti, Antonio Veneziano, Spinello Aretino, Taddeo Gaddi, Piero di Puccio, Benozzo Gozzoli and others, once covered the walls of the cemetery and were destroyed or in any case greatly damaged by the fire of 1944 due to an allied bombing. On that occasion the frescoes were detached for the very urgent restorations (largely still in progress) and these preparatory drawings were found to be extraordinarily preserved. After the restoration they were placed in today's museum, which is located on the south side of the Piazza del Duomo, where there is one of the two ticket offices of the monumental complex. In the Museum, in addition to the sinopias themselves, there are two multimedia areas. One where a stereoscopic 3D simulation of the monumental cemetery over the centuries is reproduced, the other where, in a sort of small cinema, an audiovisual is projected regarding the structure and the restoration works of the leaning tower, for the moment only in English .