The building that has housed the Museo della Grafica since 2007, contains interesting painted wall decorations from the middle ages and showcases the construction work and tastes through the centuries of the Lanfranchi family, the longest lasting owners and inhabitants of this building (1539-1802). In 1952 palazzo Lanfranchi was taken over by Pisa Town Administration who renovated it under the direction of the architect Massimo Carmassi. The object of work was to recover the layers of structural and decorative elements and required the much criticized removal of certain parts of the building (for example, the plaster finish on the façade), althoughthere was also praise for revealing the hidden medieval wall decorations, previously invisible.
The Museo della Grafica, now in these rooms, contains one of the most important public collections of contemporary prints and engravings, the nucleus of which is the previous Pisa University Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe founded in 1957 by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti.
Gifts from artists and donations from scholarly collectors, suchas the scientist and historian of sciences Sebastiano Timpanaro and the historian and art critic Giulio Carlo Argan, the engravings and drawings are a valuable and rare treasure, enhanced in 1967 by the Calcografia Nazionale’s bestowal in perpetual storage of a consistent number of engravings. Finally, the documents sector with thousands of documents, leaflets, brochures, testimonies and tributes from artists connected in various ways with this institution, also keeps a substantial corpus of analogical and digital photographs.
Exhibitions inspired by the collection always concern themes of general interest and are supported by conferences and workshops, also for schools.