It is located on the piano nobile (or first floor) of the Palazzo dei Diamanti, a work of Renaissance architecture by Biagio Rossetti, commissioned by Leonello d’Este in 1447.

Not to be confused with the Civic Museum on the lower floor, which has hosted temporary exhibitions of contemporary art since 1992, the Pinacoteca houses a collection of paintings by the Ferrarese School dating from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The gallery is formed as much around notable northern Italian painters as it is around the exquisite interior decoration of the palace itself, together with remnants of frescoes from local churches and later acquisitions from the Sacrati Strozzi collection.

Highlights of the tour include the Hall of Honour, the sixteenth-century apartments of Virginia de' Medici (the roundels for these, early products of the Carracci workshop, can be seen in Modena's Galleria Estense) and a room dedicated to the step-by-step process of creating a fresco, panel or oil painting, complementing Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’arte.

The Costabili Polyptych by Il Garofalo and Dosso Dossi The Muses Erato and Urania from Leonello d’Este's Studiolo of Belfiore Frescoes from the 14th and early 15th century such as Scenes from the life of St. John the Evangelist and Virtues and Vices.