The antique monastery of Santa Chiara, located in Piazza Ottinetti, in the heart of Ivrea, after years of closing and important restoration work, today it houses the museum, fruit of the city archeological collection and donations of private individuals, which with a renewed set-up, gives back to the city the precious collections of archeology, Oriental art and paintings.
Characterised by periodic rotations of collections, temporary exhibits, publications and events, the museum route is articulated into three main sections.
The archeological collection gathers evidence of the city and its territory from the Neolithic Era up to the late Middle Ages. The most intensely documented history here is the Roman one, thanks to works and artifacts of the Eporedia colony period and the subsequent centuriation of the territory period. An important item of this section witnessing this period is the gromatico stele (the groma was the instrument that the romans commonly used to measure fields), besides a milestone and a tympanum. The first nucleus of the collection was collected by count Carlo Francesco BaldassarrePerrone, assisted by the count Paolo Pinchia.
The Eastern art collection, characterised by a rich variety of objects made using different material (metal, porcelain, lacquer, paper, silk, wood, bamboo, ivory, turtle shell, glass and straw) it is fruit of the personal collection of Pier Alessandro Garda and the collection of Palazzo Giusiana, first location of the museum. Between the two funds, the Garda one includes mainly objects from Japan, while the second - already property of the count Carlo Francesco BaldassarrePerrone (1718-1802) - included different objects from China and other Asian countries.
The Croff collection consists of paintings by substantially important artists, given to the Ivrea Municipality thanks to the will of Mrs. Lucia Guelpa (and later entrusted from the Municipality to the specifically formed Guelpa Foundation). Humanistic training and a passion for art encouraged AbdoneCroff to collect approximately fifty between paintings and drawings, among them masterpieces by Giovanni del Biondo, Neri di Bicci, Bergognone, Annibale Carracci, Giuseppe Palizzi, Filadelfo Simi, Pietro Annigoni, Xavier e Antonio Bueno, Giorgio De Chirico. The collection is completed by a gathering of copies of letters written between the second half of the Thirties and 1946 to the artists, the antiques and art merchants, and the related answers that make it possible to recreate the atmosphere it was formed.