The Museum of the Resistance conserves about 80 works from the second half of the twentieth century, all inspired by the terrible events in Sant’Anna in Stazzema in 1944.

The collection took shape over the course of the years thanks to donations by artists connected to the Apuan and Versilio areas, and with representatives from other parts of Italy (Pietro Annigoni, Gualtiero Nativi, Marco Nereo Rotelli) and abroad (Henry Marinsky).
These are mainly paintings, but there are also some examples of sculptures and installations.

After restoration in 1993 the Civic Museum was set up again in the north turret of Villa Paolina — today seat of the Civic Museums of Viareggio — in the studio in which the painter Alfredo Catarsini (1899–1993) had worked for over fifty years, from after the war until his death. Here are conserved works, photographs and documents relative to the artist’s long working life and his links with his home territory.

Catarsini, whose early career grew in the shadow of Modigliani and Viani, met success while still young, thanks to a painting that conveyed the picturesqueness of the Versilia landscape in a fresh twentieth-century language.
He adhered then to the avant-gardist renewal of Italian art in the course of the two periods that he himself called “riflessismo” (reflectionism) and “simbolismo meccanico” (mechanical symbolism).

The citadel of the Carnival of Viareggio houses within it two museums.

The Museo del Carnevale relates — through documents, sketches, posters and little models — the history of the carnival in Viareggio. Introduced by Burlamacco, a character invented by Umberto Bonettin in 1930, the itinerary presents small models of the allegorical floats, next to the works of artists who have worked for the carnival (Enrico Prampolini, Lucio Venna, Moses Levy, Umberto Bonetti) and reproductions of the advertising posters from 1925 up to the present. The Museo Arte Contemporanea Carnevalotto [Carnevalotto Museum of Contemporary Art], instead, focuses on the Premio Carnevalotto, a prize set up in 1987 by the Carnival Foundation and Studio Saudino to award the best float and designer with works on a theme specially created by Italian and foreign artists, including Sebastian Matta, Pietro Cascella, Piero Dorazio and Joe Tilson.
The two institutions also offer a busy educational programme and a study centre aimed at keeping the records of the event.

The gallery’s venue is the historic Palazzo delle Muse.
The present collection consists of 3,000 works by some 750 artists, leading figures in twentieth-century art. Local artists are also represented, and those who enjoyed strong links with the area; and there are also works having local landscapes as their subject. The Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAMC) possesses the most significant public collection of the works by the painter Lorenzo Viani, one of the protagonists of the European Expressionist current of the early decades of the twentieth century.

The first nucleus of the collection was established in 1979 through the Municipality’s acquisition of 50 works by Lorenzo Viani from the Varraud Santini collection which, together with other acquisitions or those in other bequests, today constitute the most important public collection of the master’s work. A strong boost to the establishment of the city museum came from the Lucarelli donation of 45 works by leading Italian artists of the twentieth century.
The Pieraccini donation, with about 2,300 works of mainly contemporary European art, was what definitely decided the setting up of the GAMC. Most of the collection consists in graphic works. The gallery has an intense programme of expositions, conferences, meetings and workshops.

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Thanks to the town centre’s plethora of monuments, this “little Athens” of Versilia has in time become a true art centre with numerous galleries and important seasonal exhibitions in the Piazza del Duomo and in the church of Sant’Agostino, between the Gothic Torre delle Ore and the Teatro Comunale against the backdrop of the Apuan Alps.

Along the village streets are the typical marble craftsmen’s workshops: long a point of reference for Italian and foreign artists who work here and live in close contact with the artisans. Some of the artists have taken up residence in Pietrasanta, like Fernando Botero, here since 1983 — his frescoes of the Last Judgement can be seen in the church of the Misericordia, his bronze Il guerriero [The warrior] in Piazza del Municipio; or like the late Igor Mitoraj — his bronze sculpture of the Centaur stands in Piazza del Centauro, his high-relief of the Annunciation on the portal of Sant’Agostino.

Founded in 1984, thanks to the Danish art critic and photographer Jette Muhlendorph, the museum documents the activity of the sculptors who come from all over the world to create their own works in the city’s marble workshops and bronze foundries.

It is a unique institution of its kind and is a direct reflection of that typical craft of the Apuan and Versilia areas — sculpture. Housed in the sixteenth-century convent of Sant’Agostino, the museum explains the process involved in creating works in marble and bronze and documents the artists’ work.

The collection has brought together over 600 sketches and models — prevalently plaster casts — by Italian and foreign artists whose finished works are found in museums, collections and parks all around the world. In the separate venue in Via Marconi is a large educational atelier, equipped for projections and workshop activities.

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At Vittoria Apuana, a step away from the Caffè Roma Quarto Platano, where artists and literary enthusiasts would meet on long summer afternoons, there stands the historic museum house and studio of Ugo Guidi (1912–1977), sculptor of Forte dei Marmi, a pupil of Arturo Dazzi‘s.

His sons Vittorio and Fabrizio have left the studio untouched, the shelves still loaded with scale models, works, drawings, preparatory studies, books and photographs, trestles and posters; and they have made it a small and undoubtedly fascinating museum. In 2005 the Regional Government of Tuscany inserted it into the programme Case della Memoria, making it possible for the historic house museum to open to the public. Since 2006 the Ugo Guidi Historic House Museum has adhered to the FAI project and that of the Amico Museo of the Tuscany Region, participating in the European Heritage Day promoted by the Ministry for Heritage; and it has developed a lively programme offering educational activities, games, and workshops.

The Museum of Satire and Caricature, founded in 1997 in the Fort of Leopoldo I, was inspired by the noted Premio Satira Politica, the prize for political satire set up by the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi in 1973, and still carried on.

The idea to conserve and display the history of satire and caricature here finds an outlet through the rotating exhibitions of a considerable heritage of original satiric drawings and the organization of temporary thematic shows focusing on Italian and foreign satiric authors and journals.

The museum collection has been formed through acquisitions also derived from the exhibitions held between 1980 and 1996, and donations by private citizens, as in the recent example of the Visacci (caricatural faces) by Mippia Fucini Catarzi.
The museum includes a research centre with specialist library, a video library and multimedia archive.

Giovanni Pascoli transferred to Barga, in the village of Castelvecchio on the slopes of Mount Caprona in 1895, and lived there till his death in 1912.

The eighteenth-century residence is today a historic house museum open to the public, maintaining unaltered its appearance at the time of the poet. I
n the interior, apart from furnishings, books and many everyday objects, the walls feature paintings by Antonio De Witt, Plinio Nomellini, Alberto Magri, Tullo Golfarelli, Vico Viganò, and Attilio Pratella.
Adjacent to the house is the chapel frescoed by Adolfo Balduini, with an ark by Leonardo Bistolfi housing the tombs of Pascoli and his sister Maria.

Puccini’s villa at Torre del Lago, still today belonging to the family, is a fine historic house museum. Preserved here are his hunting rifles and manuscripts, as is — in the drawing room — the Maestro’s pianoforte.

Giacomo Puccini had bought the house in 1899, but the pre-existing building was completely demolished and rebuilt on the lines of a plan that resulted from a collaboration between Puccini, De Servi, Nomellini, Galileo Chini and the architect Vincenzo Pilotti.
Besides memorabilia, various items and portraits from the musician’s collection, it is possible to visit the rooms decorated by Galileo Chini, and the chapel decorated by Adolfo De Carolis — where the composer is buried together with his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law. The small garden, originally bordering the lake, inspired in its size and style by the rock gardens of Japan.