Casa di Goethe museum

“Indeed, it is fortunate for me that Tischbein has nice quarters where he lives with a few other painters”.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, 1st November 1786

Visiting Italy was his lifelong dream: after leaving Germany at dawn on 3 September 1786, German poet and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stayed in the land of his longing for nearly two years, but spent most of his time in Rome, the “First City of the World”.

Located on Via del Corso, a stone’s throw from Piazza del Popolo, the Casa di Goethe is the Roman apartment where the German poet lived from 1786 to 1788, along with painters Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Johann Georg Schütz and Friedrich Bury. Inaugurated in 1997, it is currently the only German museum outside of Germany, a vibrant hub of German-Italian cultural exchange that preserves books, documents, letters and drawings recounting the artist’s famous trip to Italy, and hosts temporary exhibitions, events, lectures, readings and conferences in both languages.

The museum has its own collection, with works by German artists from his circle of friends in Rome but also by contemporary Italian and German artists engaged with the theme Goethe. The collection’s paintings, drawings, prints, books, autographs, sculptures, photographs and installations are used for the permanent exhibition “Goethe in Italy” and for temporary exhibitions designed by a team of experts with proven Goethe expertise. In addition to the works Goethe created and completed in Rome, which include “Iphigenia” and “Tasso”, an eye-catcher of this exhibition is Andy Warhol’s 1982 portrait of Goethe which alludes to Tischbein’s famous painting “Goethe in the Campagna di Roma”.

The museum also houses two important libraries (the Historical library of the Association of German Artists and a reference library with about 8,500 volumes) and maintains a scholarship program and events dedicated to German-Italian cultural exchanges.