The sixteenth-century villa built close to the heart of the thermal centre of Abano Terme houses the House Museum Villa Bassi Rathgeb. Destined to house the huge patrimony donated to the City by the widow of Roberto Bassi Rathgeb, illustrious collector, art historian and intellectual from Bergamo, the House Museum became municipal property in 1979. At the time of the purchase, the building was in a state of great decay. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out accurate restoration works that involved all the nine very important cycles of frescoes present in the villa. Next to the noble residence there is also an Oratory built after 1775 by the marquis Giovanni Antonio Dondi Orologio. Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of Loreto, the Oratory was built in the form of a replica of the Holy House of Nazareth venerated in the famous Sanctuary of the Marches, of which there are about eighty replicas in Italy. At present the works of the Bassi Rathgeb Collection are set up on the first and second floor of the villa, while the suggestive underground rooms are destined to host, every six months, temporary exhibitions.The Bassi Rathgeb Collection was acquired by the Municipality of Abano Terme in two different moments. The first donation, which took place in 1972, includes about fifty paintings, drawings and engravings that are part of a chronological arc that goes from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, with names of Renaissance masters of great importance, such as Giovanni Cariani, Moretto da Brescia and Palma il Giovane, as well as painters of the seventeenth century Veneto and Lombardy. The second, in 1980, has four hundred pieces including paintings, drawings, engravings, furniture and furnishings from the palace in Bergamo.
