Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova

The Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova holds the contents of Canova's Roman studio: the plaster models from which his marbles were carved, brought to Possagno after his death in 1822 and housed beside the village house where he was born.

A gypsotheca is a collection of plasters, and this is the largest body of Canova's anywhere. These are not copies of the finished works — they are the originals in the sequence, the full-size models a carver measured from, with the metal reference pins still set into their surfaces.

The collection is displayed in two very different buildings: a long nineteenth-century top-lit hall, and a small white wing added by Carlo Scarpa in 1957 that is among the finest museum interiors in Italy. One ticket covers the museum and Canova's birthplace next door.

Plaster is far more fragile than marble, and these are the artist's own working originals rather than reproductions. In places the models stand at floor level without barriers — that is part of Scarpa's design, and it depends on visitors behaving accordingly.

Do not touch anything. Keep bags in front of you rather than on your shoulder, particularly in the narrow Scarpa rooms.

No flash anywhere in the Gypsotheca.

The museum is the village's largest employer and the main reason visitors come at all. Buying the ticket rather than only walking up to the free church is, in a direct sense, what keeps the collection maintained.

One ticket covers the Gypsotheca and Canova's birthplace, generally around 10 EUR.

Closed Mondays. Hours are seasonal and shorter in winter — check before travelling, particularly between November and March.

Allow 90 minutes for the museum alone, or two hours for the museum and the Tempio together.

Accessibility — the museum is accessible throughout, including Scarpa's wing. The Tempio up the hill is not, which is worth knowing when planning the pair.

Possagno is about 20 minutes from Asolo and 30 from Bassano del Grappa. A car is effectively necessary; buses are infrequent.

Photography without flash is generally permitted.