MIC – International Museum of Ceramics
Faenza is the City of Ceramics (the term faiance indicates the majolica internationally) and here there had to be a Museum dedicated to ceramics. Founded in September 1908 by Gaetano Ballardini, the International Museum of Ceramics, is one of the most important ceramic museums in the world.
Between the corridors and the spacious rooms of the Museum, the history of ceramics can be traced from the pre-Columbian age up to today. The initial area was the Section of Nations, which was later added to with a permanent exhibition of modern Italian ceramic art in 1926, a section of ancient Italian majolica and that of popular pottery (1916), and the Section of the Far East (1919). Then they were organized into educational sections: Italian majolica, prehistoric ceramics and the classical world, the ceramics of the East and finally the pre-Columbian ceramics. The collections are divided into three large sections (Italian ceramics, civilizations and continents, contemporary ceramics), which create an encyclopedia of ceramics from its beginning to the blossoming of the various Italian and foreign schools, to the most modern expressions of the art of our days.
In the first section, which consists of works from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, are many pieces of local provenance, among which the jugs of the fourteenth century with noble coats of arms and a plate of the fifteenth century with the typical decoration of a lion are of particular importance.
There are also excellent works from the Umbrian school (Deruta, Gubbio), Puglia and Sicily.
The second section includes artifacts made from ancient Italic peoples, pre-Columbian material, Somali, European majolica and Chinese porcelain.
The contemporary section also has a wealth of works by great artists of the twentieth century, such as Matisse, Picasso Chagall, Lèger, Martini and Fontana.
