01

A Hidden Treasure in Treviso

The collection sits in the historic centre, a short walk from the canals, and yet it rarely enters the account of the Veneto that begins and ends in Venice. The Ministry of Culture describes it as the widest holding of advertising graphics in the country. That claim is about paper, ink and the commercial image, not about a room of masterpieces arranged once and left.

An illustrated poster is a public object. It was printed to be seen in passing, then thrown away. What survives in Treviso is the exception: sheets kept because someone understood that the way a product was drawn also recorded how people wished to live. Fashion, fuel, food, travel and the cinema all pass through the same format. The lettering changes. The argument stays.

02

The Extraordinary Vision of Nando Salce

Ferdinando Salce, called Nando, of Treviso, lived from 1877 to 1962. The museum’s account is precise about the habit, not about romance. As a young man, and with a family fortune that allowed him to collect almost to the exclusion of anything else, he began to buy illustrated posters.

In 1895, at eighteen, he acquired the first sheet: Giovanni Maria Mataloni’s Incandescenza a gas. The museum records it as the Auer patent. On the poster itself the word is printed Aver. From that purchase he did not stop. Over his life he gathered about 25,000 pieces and kept them in the attic of his house in Piazza Mazzini, in the centre of Treviso.

On 26 April 1962 his will left the collection to the Italian State. For decades after that gift, the posters had no museum of their own. They were known through temporary exhibitions. In 2014 the holding became a permanent national museum. The public entrance at San Gaetano opened in May 2017.

03

Nearly 50,000 Posters, One Remarkable Legacy

Other collectors followed his example and gave their own holdings to the museum. The Ministry’s page for San Gaetano now states that nearly 50,000 posters are conserved there. The figure includes Salce’s original gift and what arrived after it. It is a working total, not a promise of what will be on the wall.

The value of the collection is double. As art, the sheets belong to the history of illustration, lettering and the printed image. As documents, they show what Italian advertising asked people to want, and how that request was drawn. A national graphic archive of this kind is rare because posters were made to disappear.

04

Two Historic Homes in the Heart of Treviso

The museum has two seats, both in the historic centre and a short distance from one another.

Complesso di San Gaetano

Via Carlo Alberto 31. Opened to the public in May 2017, the building is arranged on four floors, with service rooms and exhibition walls designed for graphic material. The entrance looks onto the parvis of the church of San Gaetano.

Complesso di Santa Margherita

Via Reggimento Italia Libera. Inaugurated in 2021, in the former church, with rooms for conservation and display and an immersive multimedia installation. The opening exhibition was devoted to Renato Casaro.

05

An Ever-Changing Collection

Neither seat keeps a permanent hang. The Ministry states the reason twice, and it is worth repeating: the choice is scientific, and it is also a matter of conservation. Paper of this kind cannot live indefinitely in the light. The posters are shown in rotation, through temporary exhibitions that are monographic or thematic.

A visit therefore meets a chapter, not the archive. The sheet one hopes to find may be in store. That limit is part of the intelligence of the place. The collection is larger than any one room.

06

Renato Casaro and the Art of Cinema

The top floor of San Gaetano holds Sala Casaro, a room for Renato Casaro (1935–2025), the Treviso illustrator whose painted cinema posters became a profession in themselves. The Ministry describes the room as a sequence of thematic exhibitions of his sketches, changed over time rather than fixed as a single display.

Casaro belongs here for a local reason and a formal one. He worked in the same city that kept Salce’s attic, and he worked in the same public format: an image made to be read at a distance, then replaced by the next one.

07

Beyond the Posters: The Church of San Gaetano

The church of San Gaetano, also San Giovanni al Tempio, stands on the parvis the museum entrance faces. Inside, the Ministry records a group of paintings by Ludovico Pozzoserrato and Giovanni Battista Canal, and an eighteenth-century organ by Gaetano Callido, described as one of the most precious instruments in the city.

The church is not a standing annexe of the ticket. It is open to the public when a temporary exhibition is installed inside it, and on the conditions the museum confirms at the time. The paintings and the organ are part of the building’s own history. They are not a second collection of posters.