Casa Rossini (Pesaro)

Casa Rossini, on Via Gioachino Rossini in the heart of Pesaro on the Adriatic coast of Marche, is the house where the composer Gioachino Rossini was born on 29 February 1792. Preserved as a house-museum since the late nineteenth century and part of the Pesaro Musei civic network, it occupies the modest townhouse in which the future master of Italian opera spent his earliest years, the son of a horn player and a singer. The museum's rooms trace Rossini's life and career through portraits, prints, autograph letters and manuscripts, period furnishings, playbills, caricatures and memorabilia connected to the composer of The Barber of Seville, William Tell and dozens of other operas that made him one of the most celebrated figures of nineteenth-century music. Displays follow his rise from a provincial childhood to international fame in Naples, Vienna and Paris, his retirement from opera and his later years, illuminating both the man and the world of bel canto opera he dominated. The house itself, with its restored interiors, gives an intimate sense of the period, while audiovisual material and recordings let visitors hear the music born of this lineage. Pesaro celebrates its most famous son above all through the prestigious Rossini Opera Festival held each August, and a visit to Casa Rossini complements the festival and the city's other Rossini sites, including the Teatro Rossini and the conservatory that bears his name. Compact and atmospheric, the museum is an essential stop for music lovers and a window onto the cultural pride of Pesaro, a UNESCO Creative City of Music.