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CONTENT
F RENCE THEME
MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
The Italian landscape is world-famous.
It has been
described and visited in all ages.
Who does not know the
extraordinary range of
landscapes
that make up the Italian peninsula, extending
from the Alps to the centre of the Mediterranean, with its
hinterlands and its Rivieras? Who does not have in mind
at least one of the countless monuments encountered
while traveling through Italy, a country offering a unique
stratified palimpsest of testimonies from Antiquity to the
Middle Ages, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, from
the Neoclassical age to the present day?
Equally famousare Italy’smajormuseums
, from the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence to the Brera Gallery in Milan; from
the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, the Capodimonte
in Naples and the Savoia Gallery in Turin to the Vatican
Museums in Rome. Their masterpieces are an essential
part of the
Imaginary Museum
described by André
Malraux, along with many other works of art which are
preserved in churches, in palaces and in the towns and
villages of the
Bel Paese
. Most works are displayed in
art and archaeology museums, but also in sites and
historic buildings that make Italy a great
museo diffuso
:
an extended museum, an
open air museum.
The Italian museum scenario is even richer than its
well established image
. First of all, there are the
great museums born of the dynastic collections of
pre-unification States (before 1861, Italy was politically
divided in several independent states). Then there is the
network of civic museums of large and medium-sized
towns, and finally hundreds of small local museums,
mostly established in the last few decades. In 2011, Italy
had 4,588 museums and similar institutions, in detail
3,847 museums, 240 archaeological parks and areas,
and 501 monuments and historic buildings
. Nearly one
out of three municipalities hosts at least one museum.
Italy is a country where, as André Chastel wrote, “the
collection, the building that hosts it and the town around
the building are deeply intertwined: these three forms
of museums are reflected in each other.”
1
1
A. Chastel,
Italia museo dei musei
, in
I musei
, TCI, Milano 1980, p. 14
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegoria ed Effetti del Buono e del Cattivo Governo (1338-1339), Effetti del Buon Governo in campagna (Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad
Government, Effects of Good Government) Fresco – Siena, Sala del Consiglio dei Nove o della Pace, Palazzo Pubblico 2