10 Things to do Good for a Rainy Day in Mendrisiotto That You Shouldn't Miss

The Vincenzo Vela Museum is one of the most important artists' house-museums to have been erected in nineteenth-century Europe. Conceived by the great realist sculptor Vincenzo Vela from Ticino (1820-91) at the height of his career, and transformed into a public museum after it was donated to the Swiss state, in addition to Vincenzo Vela's gallery of monumental plaster casts it includes the bequests of the sculptor Lorenzo Vela (1812-97) and painter Spartaco Vela (1854-95), a remarkable collection of nineteenth-century Lombard and Piedmontese paintings, hundreds of autograph drawings and one of the earliest private collections of photographs in Switzerland.

Remodeled and expanded by the Ticinese architect Mario Botta, the Museum of fossils from Monte San Giorgio was inaugurated the 13th of october of 2012. The structure exhibits a selection of fossilized animals and plants from the unique UNESCO World Heritage Site of Monte San Giorgio.

Aperture fuori orario e visite guidate su prenotazione. Chiusura estiva dal 1° luglio al 15 agosto compresi. Chiusura invernale dal 24 dicembre al 7 gennaio.

With its rich permanent collection exhibited on a rotating basis, the Zust Gallery is today the primary centre for studying art of the period from the Renaissance to the 19th century in the Canton Ticino. A former parish house renovated and enlarged by the architect Tita Carloni (1967) and refurbished by the architect Claudio Cavadini (1990) provides a splendid setting for paintings by the major artists of Lombardy and Ticino from the 17th century to the 19th, including Giovanni Serodine, Giuseppe Antonio Petrini, Antonio Rinaldi, Luigi Rossi, Adolfo Feragutti Visconti and Gioachimo Galbusera among many others. The gallery also presents two temporary exhibitions a year curated by outstanding figures in the world of art.