Mastai Palace Museum Pio IX

Among the illustrious citizens of Senigallia there is also a Pontiff: Pope Pius IX, born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, born in 1792 to the noble Mastai family, who arrived in Senigallia from Crema. The Mastai lived in Senigallia until the early ‘900s.

The palace, built at the beginning of the 16th century, takes on historical importance in particular for being the house where Count Giovanni Maria, the future Pontiff with the name of Pius IX, was born on 13 May 1792.

The architectural line is sober and severe, while the internal structure is of notable interest, a typical example of a noble palace from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rooms on the first floor house the Museum, full of important relics from the life of Pope Pius IX. The coat of arms portal and the reception hall decorated with a cycle of twenty canvases with biblical subjects, the work of the Senigallia painter Giovanni Anastasi (1653-1704), are noteworthy. In the Amnesty Room, you can admire two Roman amphorae found in the Adriatic Sea by Senigallian fishermen, while the Chapel of the Gentilizia houses a beautiful copy of the Madonna known as the Madonna del Sassoferrato.