at stimulating an interest in the history of costume. The armory initially represented the dominant sector of its interests, with a preference for Japanese weapons during the last part of its life. In particular for each type of weapon Stibbert thought of some real scenographic contexts: he studied appropriate mannequins on which to mount arms and armor and set up and decorated the rooms in order to make them suitable to what was contained. More generally, he restructured his residence and reorganized it from the perspective of the museum (today there are 64 rooms on two floors, for a total of 5,000 m2). The result was a hybrid in which the rooms of daily life merged with those of the collections, this means that there was not a part of the villa used as a dwelling and another used as an exhibition place, but that the house was the museum and the museum was the house. Over time he extended his passion for collecting to paintings, goldsmith's work, porcelains, costumes, fabrics, furnishing objects and books. Stibbert bought all these things during his travels, but he still used a dense network of links and informers that kept him constantly updated on the world antiques market. From this point of view he set about research with a rare international vision for that era. Sometimes Stibbert was accused of being a "forger" because his group of craftsmen (a chief gunsmith and five workers) completed armor and operated restorations in an arbitrary manner. From this point of view, however, he was perfectly in line with the thought of his time. Stibbert spent a lot of money for his collection, and therefore for his museum, but always wisely and not neglecting his own affairs, so much so that he was able to preserve his heritage almost intact. He never married and had no direct heirs. He devoted his whole life to what he called "my museum" in his will. In this will he expressed the desire that his collections (over 50,000 pieces) and the villa Montughi were established in a museum open to the public, but with the clause that the original location was respected. The British government was appointed as the first legatee, with the possibility, however, of withdrawing to the advantage of the city of Florence, which in fact took possession of it in 1908, establishing the Stibbert Opera Museum Foundation. The original