Museo Bagatti Valsecchi
Go to main content
We use cookies to optimize our website and services.
This website uses Google Analytics (GA4) as a third-party analytical cookie in order to analyse users’ browsing and to produce statistics on visits; the IP address is not “in clear” text, this cookie is thus deemed analogue to technical cookies and does not require the users’ consent.

ROOM 10

Room of the Valtellinese Stove

This room is the first visitors encounter in the suite of Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi and his wife, Carolina Borromeo. It was used as a sitting room, and owes its name to the wooden wall paneling once gracing a room with a heating stove in a centuries-old house in Sondrio. Above the room’s fireplace, an inscription in Latin paraphrasing St. Augustine warns those present against taking advantage of sitting in front of the fire to indulge in gossip: ‘he who speaks badly of those not present, may he know that this fireside is forbidden to him’.

On the mantelpiece of the fireplace:

QUISQUIS AMAT DICTIS ABSENT(I)UM RODERE VITAM

HANC FLAM(M)AM VETITAM NOVERIT ESSE SIBI

Whoever loves to talk badly about (people) who are not present,

know that this fireside is forbidden to you.

Bagatti Valsecchi Cabinet

Room of the Valtellinese Stove

Red Room