Museo Nicolis

About this place

On one wall in a small town south-west of Verona hang 106 Formula 1 steering wheels, each a slab of carbon and switches built by an entire team for a single driver. Few museums in Europe own a wall like that, and fewer still put it a few metres from 500 vintage cameras, 102 typewriters and a row of organs and music boxes. Museo Nicolis is not really a car museum. It is an archive of the twentieth century from the years when the century was still made of metal. Behind all of it stands one man. Luciano Nicolis, a Verona entrepreneur who made his money in paper collection and recycling, spent a lifetime keeping what other people threw away, and in 2000 built a purpose-made hall to show it across several floors. The collection now runs to well over a thousand objects: 202 classic cars with roughly half on rotating display, over 100 motorcycles, 114 bicycles, three aircraft, and marques including Bugatti, Isotta Fraschini, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Rolls-Royce. His daughter Silvia runs it today, and it took Museum of the Year at the Historic Motoring Awards in 2018 — a rare honour for a privately built collection. Be honest with yourself before you go. If engines are your thing you will emerge after three hours feeling you never finished the upper floors; if you cannot tell one Maserati from another, an hour will do. What saves it for mixed groups is the sheer range of the side collections — the cameras, typewriters and mechanical instruments hold people who do not care about cars at all, and children are in their element because everything is huge, polished and lined up like toys. The building is climate-controlled and comfortable, every floor is reachable by lift and suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs, which is not something every museum in northern Italy manages. Practically: it sits about 15km from Verona at Villafranca, and getting there is easier than it looks. ATV bus 158 (and lines 157 and 159) runs from Verona Porta Nuova and stops at a stop named after the museum, directly outside the door; alternatively take the train to Villafranca di Verona station and walk about half an hour, 2.6km. It is closed on Mondays — the single most common way visitors waste a morning. Do not expect a restaurant strip outside the door: this is a semi-industrial edge of town, with cafés and trattorias back in the centre, though inside there is a bar and panoramic terrace on level 2 and a vending area on the ground floor, with no eating or drinking in the galleries themselves. There is no prayer room in the building. It does not compete with the Arena or Castelvecchio for your time either. On a two-day Verona trip, skip it without regret. With a car-obsessed teenager in tow, or on a return visit looking for a half-day out of the centre, it is the best thing the area offers.