Civico Museo d'Arte Orientale

Art Trieste, Italy

In the historic center of Trieste, a few steps from Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia, the Civic Museum of Oriental Art was inaugurated in 2001. The exhibition itinerary unfolds over four levels and includes works of oriental art, weapons, musical instruments and objects of an ethnographic nature mostly from China and Japan. On the top two floors of the Museum, the section dedicated to Japan includes porcelain, weapons and armor, netsuke and other personal objects in ivory and lacquer, and has its strong point in the entirely exhibited collection of Ukiyo-e prints, including works by great masters of Japanese art including Hiroshige and Hokusai with the famous Onda. One section is dedicated to the tradition of Japanese theater, through the exhibition of prints taken from kabuki dramas, a nucleus of musical instruments - shamisen, biwa and koto - and some masks which, although not purely theatrical, refer to types of characters and demons also in scenic reference.