Giorgio Bassani Museum-House

Address Via Cisterna del Follo 3

The former home of Giorgio Bassani, one of the great Italian novelists of the 20th century, has been preserved as a small museum dedicated to his life and work. Bassani was born in Ferrara in 1916 and grew up in the Jewish community he later memorialised in his "Romanzo di Ferrara" cycle of novels — six books set in the city from the 1920s to the post-war period.

The museum includes personal objects, manuscripts, photographs, and editions of his work, and gives a sense of the refined but anxious world of Ferrara's Jewish bourgeoisie that Bassani described. For anyone who has read The Garden of the Finzi-Continis or The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, a visit adds an extra layer to walking the city's streets and the ghetto neighbourhood.

things to do museum sight
A story
Giorgio Bassani's novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962) — set in Ferrara's Jewish bourgeoisie during the Fascist period — won the Viareggio Prize and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film by Vittorio De Sica. Bassani spent most of his adult life in Rome, but always identified himself as a Ferrarese writer, and the city's streets, walls, and Jewish community permeate all his fiction.

Other places in Things to Do