The city is home to a range of various museums:
The National Archaeological Museum that houses the artefacts from the Etruscan city of Spina; the National Art Gallery - housing medieval, Renaissance and Modern Art from Ferrara and other works by great artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Ercole dei Roberti, Mantegna, Garofalo, Bastianino, Niccolò Pisano and Dosso Backs; the Cathedral Museum; the Museum of the Ottocento (1800's); the Museum Giovanni Boldini which houses the best works of this 19th century painter from Ferrara who pictorially transports traditional Italian movements to the age of Impressionism; the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Filippo De Pisis; the Jewish Museum that tells of the Jewish ghetto immortalised in the writings of George Bassani; the Museum of the Renaissance and the Resistance.
Ferrara is also known for: the Castello Estense (Este Castle), with its perfectly conserved halls adorned with frescoes and tapestries, the ducal kitchens, its prisons, the Loggia and Garden of Oranges, and the visitable Ducal Chapel; the Casa Romei a 14th century villa with ecclesiastical frescoes, "Ferrariae Decus" furniture of the early 1900s and ornate stonework; the Palazzo Schifanoia, the dwelling of Borso d'Este who commissioned the majestic frescoes in the Hall of the Months showing the cycle of the constellations of the zodiac; and the Palazzo Marfisa d'Este.