The Museum of Scales is a place where art meets technology. It was born thanks to the passion of Velio Ortolani, an extraordinary collector who has made available part of his unusual and substantial collection of scales and weights, one of the most important in Europe in terms of typology, chronology, and number of pieces. The Museum's rooms house 160 objects of different types that allow us to retrace over 600 years of the history of scales, starting from some small Renaissance-era steelyards made from a sword to the large industrial scales of the last century.

Some scales evoke tender childhood memories, such as children's weighing scales or equal-arm scales for domestic use. Others surprise with their extraordinary beauty, attention to detail, and sophistication of decoration. The Museum does not only exhibit the objects and narrate their technical evolution over the centuries. The scales are returned to their function and become a particular starting point for a different way of "doing" history.

Palazzo Massi represents well the quality of the latest expansion of the urban center "intra moenia," that is, within the walls of the town. Remarkable are the rusticated decorations of the windows and the monumental entrance portal, indicating the construction period of the complex around the 16th century. It now houses the Museum of Scales in its rooms.