The civic Guido Sutermeister museum

The Roots of the history of our territory

Created in 1929 by Guido Sutermeister and recognised as a museum since 2004, the civic museum is housed in a building that faithfully reconstructs the fifteenth-sixteenth-century Lampugnani manor, reusing numerous original elements. It houses archaeological evidence from all over the district that also reconstruct the history of civilizations along Olona river from prehistory to the medieval Longobard era.

The civic museum of Legnano was created in 1929 thanks to the will of Guido Sutermeister, founder of the Society Art History, who carried out an assiduous archaeological research on the territory between 1925 and 1964. It is housed in a place of excellence, which recalls a fifteenth- and sixteenth-century noble residence of Lampugnani family. The building, first placed in a frieze in Sempione Avenue, was then demolished to allow the expansion of the road, and was here faithfully rebuilt by Guido Moro of the Municipal Technical Office, in collaboration with the architect. Carlo Bianchi of the Superintendence of the time, recovering wooden ceilings, fireplaces, columns and other materials of the original building. The museum's first collections, made up of heterogeneous material from excavations carried out during the fascist regime, not only in Legnano but throughout the surrounding area, were then enriched with finds recovered by the Lombardy Archaeological Superintendence and donations from private individuals. Today the museum preserves archaeological finds from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages Lombard, with particular reference to the Roman Empire. The findings preserved testify to the frequentation of the area since the Copper Age and the existence of a permanent civilization since the Bronze Age.
Inside the museum, until 2012, there were also three large paintings by Gaetano Previati, representing the three fundamental moments of the Battle of Legnano, today exhibited at the Castle of Legnano in the homonymous room.
In 2004 the museum obtained the status of a museum from the Lombardy Region.