Location and history of the museum

The Palazzina delle Arti, today dedicated to Lucio Roberto Rosaia, mayor of La Spezia from 1993 to 1997, who wanted its reconstruction as part of the project called "cultural path of the historic center", was designed around the Twenties, originally with the Office of Hygiene function. Of neo-medieval taste - a particularly fertile style in La Spezia between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century - it is ideally linked, even if not historically, to the adjoining Convent of San Francesco da Paola, now the seat of the "Amedeo Lia" Civic Museum. Just after the opening of the Lia Museum, this building, which became the site of temporary exhibitions, was restored to include the Museo del Sigillo as well as the Special Library of Art and Archeology. The exhibitions are mainly oriented to the history of local and regional art and to the great masters of painting and photography.

The rooms for temporary exhibitions in the Palazzina delle Arti are on two floors: on the first level, adjacent to the Museo del Sigillo, there are two medium-sized exhibition rooms and a very large one also used for presentations and conferences. The second level has another multi-purpose space with glazed gallery. In these spaces are generally set up exhibitions of modern and contemporary art (photography, sculpture and painting) with particular regard to the regional history and the provincial territory.

On the roof of the building a pyramid-shaped volume in steel glass has been inserted, an upward "eye" that resumes, in a modern form, the traditional motif of the dormer window. At the height of the roof extends the airy terrace recovered and redesigned for a very suggestive outdoor exhibition space because it allows the view from above of the whole museum and the city.