Civic Art Gallery The origins of the Civic Art Gallery date back to 1838, when the works of art left to the Municipality after the first Napoleonic suppression were gathered at the Public Library in Palazzo della Missione, later Palazzo degli Studi. Later on, paintings and frescoes from the Municipal Residence, the Cathedral and other religious buildings were added to the collection. Count Pietro Guarini, Gonfaloniere of Forlì, helped to develop the new institution; other increases to the collection were promoted by the municipal administration, and later atfer the application of the subversive laws of 1866/67. In 1922, the Library, the Art Gallery and the Museums were moved to their current location, built in the 18th century as the Hospital of the House of God for the Sick, based on a project by Giuseppe Merenda. The Piancastelli legacy (1938) gave a substantial contribution to the documentation of sixteenth century art in Romagna with works by Bartolomeo Ramenghi, Innocenzo Francucci da Imola, Giovan Battista Ramenghi and Luca Longhi. In 1961, with the Verzocchi collection, the Art Gallery acquired a fund of contemporary artworks on a theme, dedicated to work, a unicum in the history of collecting. A further increase to the museum's collections also came with the Flemish and genre paintings of the Pedriali collection (1964), among them, there are artworks by the French Jacques Sablet by Rachel Ruysch and a large canvas by Giovanni Fattori. The contemporary section, in conclusion, is consists of works of Giorgio Morandi, a donation of Mr. and Mrs. Righini. The Art Gallery is currently being reorganized; the ancient section, with works from the 13th to the 18th century, has already been moved to the complex of San Domenico, seat of the Civic Museums of Forlì, where you can admire Hebe, the famous work by the sculptor Antonio Canova, the greatest exponent of neoclassicism. Most of the works by artists of the last century will soon be relocated to the restored Palazzo Romagnoli, the new museum building dedicated to the civic collections of the twentieth century and the fulcrum of the future "widespread museum" that will connect the places and other important twentieth-century artistic areas in the city. In the Palazzo del Merenda are currently open to the public the valuable Piancastelli collection of paintings and the central hall, where the great paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are exhibited: works by Francesco Albani, Andrea Sacchi, Guido Cagnacci, Cristoforo Serra, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri known as Guercino, Benedetto Gennari, Carlo Maratta, Carlo and Felice Cignani.
