ROME. BIRTH OF A CAPITAL CITY. Design of the exhibition Roma. Birth of a Capital City. 1870-1915
in the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi. With Riccardo Cavallaro, Alessandro Nanni and Francesco Murano.
An impressive temporary exhibition dedicated to the history of Rome 150 years after its proclamation as the Italian capital
An exhibition designed on the geometries of the historic building, with a scientific and evocative storytelling
The exhibition, housed on the main floor of the Museum of Rome, in the eighteenth-century Palazzo Braschi in Piazza Navona, covers about 1300 square metres and displays an extraordinary number of works, over 700, of different sizes and types (paintings, drawings, models, documents, films, photographs, posters, etc.).
The exhibition is built around the relationship between memory and modernity, between continuity and transformation. In the years between 1871 and 1915, the construction of new buildings and neighbourhoods went hand in hand with the discovery of the ruins of the archaeological city; new electric means of transport moved along the same roads travelled by carriages and horses; the first advertising posters began to appear near the ancient facades of churches. A direct confrontation between different times and civilisations, facing each other in the streets and squares of the city.
The exhibition seeks to build a direct relationship between the visitors and the people who lived through the transformations of that time. The works are exhibited on wooden walls painted with a special coarse-grained finish, in the colours of the city's plasters and stones, or on wooden tables, lit from within. The exhibition is marked by the presence of light veils suspended under the frescoed vaults of the palazzo, reproducing images of life and people in the city at the end of the 19th century. The project, effective and essential, succeeds in restoring the communicative power of its human context to the heritage on display, bringing it up to date, making it contemporary, taking the visitor into the soul of the Eternal City.
Photos by Alessandro Nanni
Video by Domenico RIcucci
