House Museum of Arlecchino

The Museum

The Arlecchino Museum is located inside Palazzo Grataroli in the borgo of Oneta and is owned by the Municipality of St. John Bianco.

The name "House of Arlecchino," with which the signorile palace of the borough is commonly known, is linked to renaissance actor Alberto Naselli, who represented the Zanni and Arlecchino in the main European courts and who stayed in the Oneta Palace in 1550.

The House preserves a selection of masks of the characters of the art comedy and houses, since 2015, a stable theatre of puppets of the Company of the Riccio, in which short stories are set up on the occasion of guided tours of the schoolchildren and special events.

The Museum is also home to teaching workshops and guided tours along the Via Mercatorum organized by the Mercatorum Cultural Pole and Priula.

The Palace

The building that today houses the museum is of medieval descent and had probably a defensive function of the borough, placed along the Via Mercatorum.

Diarist dimmed between the Quattrohundred and the Seicento, when it was purchased and renovated by the powerful local casata of the Grataroli, which boasted great riches acquired in Venice, of which they also brought the architectural taste : their palace is the only example of veneta architecture in the Brembana Valley. The Grataroli decorated the house with convenient frescoes, visible still today entering the great salon : the Picta Chamber.

The frescoes, which are dateable to the second half of the fifteenth century, bear witness to the rise of the family through the intercession of the healing saints linked to popular devotion and through the representation of a chivalescent tournament where the Gratarols, distinguishable by the presence of a gratarola (a grating) drawn on their shield, defeat the enemies by demonstrating their power to the noble families of the Valley, depicted in the coat of arms that contorted the scene.

At the entrance to the Palace, instead, a fresco is visible that represents a man with a stick in his hand accompanied by the writing : Who is not de chortesia, not intrigue in my house. If he ge venes a poltron, I will give up my baston. This painting is a representation of the Homo Sevadego, popular figure released in the retic-alpine communities and metaphor of the attachment of man to his own land and his relationship with the cycles of nature.