Palazzo Attems Petzenstein, home to the Pinacoteca of the Provincial Museums of Gorizia, was completed in its rococo style in 1750 commissioned by Count Sigismondo d’Attems Petzenstein. The two frescoed rooms by the Cividal Francesco Chiarottini (1748-1796) should date back to 1780, among which stand out the inventions of archaeological subject painted in the Room of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, so named for the subject of the stuccoes adorning the ceiling. The palace also houses an Italian garden that hosts the lapidary and in the center the Fountain of Hercules created after 1769 from a design by Nicolò Pacassi (1716-1790), court architect of Maria Theresa of Habsburg.
The palace has been the seat of the Provincial Museums of Gorizia since 1900 and today hosts spaces dedicated to temporary exhibitions and the Pinacoteca. The rooms house almost a hundred pieces including paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures that unfold in a chronological path from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century. The hall of honor, dominated by the Gods of Olympus by Antonio Paroli, also hosts the monumental Pala Attems (1758) by the Veronese Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770), also commissioned by Count Sigismondo. The collection of works by Giuseppe Tominz (1790-1866) is important, the most famous and celebrated portraitist from Gorizia, of which the museums preserve the Self-portrait with his brother Francesco (ca. 1818) a true manifesto of Tominz's poetics. The Pinacoteca also boasts a permanent collection of Josef Maria Auchentaller (1865-1949), a versatile artist and designer, representative of the Viennese Secession and a friend of Klimt, who in the early 20th century left Vienna for Grado following the entrepreneurial ambitions of his wife Emma Scheid. Also of significant interest are the signatures of artists from the first half of the 20th century: Italico Brass, Gino de Finetti and Edoardo Del Neri, Luigi Spazzapan, Veno Pilon and Ivan Čargo, the futurists Soforonio Pocarini, Tullio Crali, Raoul Cenisi and Rudolf Saxida, Avgust Cernigoj, Vittorio Bolaffio, Giannino Marchig, sculptors Marcello Mascherini, Ferruccio Patuna, Mario Sartori, Ugo Carrà and France Gorše, Giorgio Carmelich and Arturo Nathan up to Anton Zoran Music, a globally renowned Gorizia artist for his Dalmatian Ponies and the cycle We Are Not the Last.

The Pinacoteca is managed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region through ERPAC - Regional Authority for Cultural Heritage.