Otello Sarzi’s Puppet House

Casa dei Burattini di Otello Sarzi

Stepping into Otello Sarzi’s Puppet House means immersing yourself in a world where imagination, theatre and art come to life.
A remarkable place, created to preserve and celebrate the legacy of the great puppeteer Otello Sarzi, the undisputed master of puppetry and a tireless innovator, capable of transforming any material into pure theatrical magic.
The permanent exhibition, hosted by the Fondazione Famiglia Sarzi, features hundreds of works created between the 1960s and the 2000s: puppets, marionettes, stage sets, art objects and inventions that bear witness to Otello’s boundless creativity.
Alongside the great classics of traditional and experimental theatre, the exhibition features evocative scenes from the fairy tales that have shaped the artistic history of the Sarzi family.

The museum is designed as a dynamic and ever-changing experience, capable of reinventing itself for special events and constantly offering the public fresh perspectives.
Spanning two floors, visitors are guided through stage props, puppets with a thousand faces and fascinating displays, until they reach the upper floor, where the beating heart of Otello’s work takes shape – a body of work always focused on research and experimentation.

The museum houses an extraordinary collection of over 3,500 items: traditional and contemporary hand puppets, marionettes, and local Emilian masks such as Sandrone and Fagiolino, alongside puppet booths, stage sets, costumes, and a rich historical archive filled with playbills, photographs, documents, and thousands of articles dedicated to puppet theatre.
This heritage is completed by a specialized library and the scripts used by the Sarzi family since their very beginnings.

La Casa dei Burattini di Otello Sarzi is much more than a museum: it is a living space, designed to tell the story of the past, celebrate the present, and inspire the future of puppetry.
A welcoming venue featuring a small theatre, a library, and a creative workshop, where every visit turns into a journey through imagination, memory, and emotion.