Oddo Palace and the exhibition “Magiche trasparenze”

Albenga's historic palace that housed the Oddi College for centuries.
Today it is an important cultural center dedicated to exhibitions, conferences, and performances.
It houses inside it the "Magiche Trasparenze" (Magical Transparencies) exhibition, an exhibition where it is possible to admire the glass artifacts recovered during excavations in the necropolis of Albenga among which is a unique piece in the world, the so-called Blue Plate.

Palazzo Oddo is the modern name for the building that housed the Oddi College for centuries.
It arose, like most buildings in Albenga, not ex novo, but from an initial building to which other nearby buildings were assembled over the years to form a single body.
In 1860, under the new school reform of the Kingdom of Italy, it housed the boys' elementary school and the Royal Gymnasium.
In the early twentieth century a new institute, the Technical School, was added.
Palazzo Oddo maintained schools and boarding school inside it until 1940, when the City moved all schools to the modern building constructed on Via Dante Alighieri thanks to the Paccini bequest.
The Oddi College continued to survive as a simple boarding school until 1955, when it was finally closed.
The building remained abandoned for more than twenty years.
Only a few rooms on the second floor were maintained to house the Civic Library and, occasionally, classrooms.
In 2006, the municipal administration named the structure Palazzo Oddo and founded a company with the task of managing the recently discovered museum of Roman-era funerary furnishings, the famous Blue Plate, on the second floor, the Civic Library on the second floor, while the third floor was set aside to host exhibitions. St. Charles Church is equipped as an auditorium for lectures and concerts.

The “Magiche Trasparenze” exhibition is dedicated to Roman glass from Albenga, emphasizes the extraordinary, almost alchemical and therefore “magical” transformation process by which from an opaque and heavy material, such as silica, a pure and translucent, almost incorporeal product is obtained, as glass is.
The permanent exhibition consists of a conspicuous number of ancient glass pieces from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD from excavations conducted by the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Liguria in the area of the necropolis of ancient Albingaunum.
Among the most significant works is the Blue Plate, a unique piece dating from the second century AD, on which two putti dancing in honor of Bacchus have been carved.
And it is precisely of the god of wine and mystical delirium, as well as of the licentious characters in his procession, that these two discos have the attributes and characters.
The winged putto holds a six-pipe musical instrument, called a syrinx, and a shepherd's curved staff; the other, on the other hand, clutches the thyrsus and bears on his shoulders a strange burden, a feral-skinned wineskin wineskin that clearly refers to the nectar of the gods and intoxication.
The master glassmaker after mold casting, ground and polished the glass on both faces and then decorated it with wheel and lathe carvings, and finally completed the work freehand with engravings of the precision of which not even a goldsmith would be capable.
A true artist who, if not from Alexandria, no doubt stole his trade from the Alexandrian masters. The chiaroscuro effect of the modeling is utterly original, so much so that the putti seem to have the depth of a high relief, the plasticity of sculptural forms, the precision of figures chiseled or embossed in silver to which they add the transparency and movement that only glass can impart.