Rome's National Museum of Musical Instruments is composed almost entirely of Evan Gorga's vast private collection. The museum currently holds about three thousand specimens of various ages and origins, over eight hundred of which are exhibited at any given time.
Evangelista Gorga was a tenor prodigy who began his career in 1895 and reached, in just 4 years, his peak of success and subsequent withdrawal from the music world. Gorga then devoted himself exclusively to collecting, collecting about 150,000 artifacts, including ancient weapons, scales, earthenware, toys and musical instruments, in just a few decades. For reasons of money and storage, the collector was forced to get rid of part of his collection, but not the musical instruments. They did not immediately receive adequate accommodation for display, as they were distributed in several warehouses. In 1964, they were all gathered in the Palazzina Samoggia, the barracks of the ex-Principe di Piemonte, and the current headquarters of the Museum.
The Palazzina Samoggia in an important archaeological site next to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme which encompasses a complex of Cistercian buildings including the Palazzo Imperiale, the Castrense Amphitheater and the Circo Variano.
The renovation of the building, begun in 1971, ended on 27 March, 1974 with the inauguration of the Museum of Musical Instruments. Since then, the already rich collection, covering more than two thousand years of history, has been further enriched by rare and precious items, among which is the piano built by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1723, a group of twentieth-century cornamuti (curved horn pipes) by Joerg Weier and a Barberini harp.
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