Ravenna and London celebrate the anniversary of Lord Byron

In 1988, the bicentenary of the birth of Lord George Byron, Ravenna hosted the largest exhibition in Europe together with that of the Victoria Albert Museum in London on the English poet, an idea of ​​the then director of the Classense Library Donatino Domini. 36 years later, and this time on the occasion of the bicentenary of Lord Byron’s death, Ravenna is still, together with London, an important point of reference at an international level for the celebrations of the poet, with the official presentation of the Byron Museum at Palazzo Guiccioli, which will be inaugurated shortly, and with the very first guided tour of the Museum construction site scheduled for Friday.

An extraordinary story links Byron to Ravenna, from 1819 to today, and an extraordinary story links the events in Byron’s memory from that 1988 exhibition to today. In fact, when in 2011 the President of the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation, Lanfranco Gualtieri, and the President of the Cassa di Ravenna, Antonio Patuelli, initiated contacts with the Municipality of Ravenna for the purchase of the historic city building, the two presidents immediately had the intuition of dedicating the seventeenth-century residence to the memory of its most famous tenant. And so they called Donatino Domini, entrusting him, after the purchase of the Palace in 2012, with the coordination of the two scientific committees formed to direct the establishment of the Byron Museum and the Risorgimento Museum.

Figures of great academic, institutional and cultural profile have been part of the Scientific Committee since the beginning: among these Luigi Lotti, professor emeritus of the University of Florence, Sandro Rogari, full professor of Contemporary History at the University of Florence, Donatella Mazza, Claudia Giuliani, Giovanni Fanti and, for the Byronic part, Diego Saglia, Gregory Dowling, Giuliani herself and Attilio Brilli. Work began immediately on the double level of the renovation of the Palace entrusted to the designers Maurizio Scarano and Patrizia Magnani and the selection of works, memorabilia and rarities to be placed on display in the Museum, many of which had already been protagonists of the 1988 exhibition, true and the very embryo of the Byronic future of Palazzo Guiccioli.

In 2013 the first important turning points: the opening of the construction site for the works and the acquisition of the part of the Palace facing Via Morigia, initially not yet acquired by the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation. The investment allowed the total recovery of the Palace, its complete use as a Museum and the complete restoration of a monument which is not only among the most beautiful and prestigious, but also among the most significant and relevant for its history. At the same time, with the proceeds from the sale of the Palace, the Municipality of Ravenna was able to start and complete the multifunctional school center of Lido Adriano, a modern and efficient structure that allows thousands of very young people to grow and study a few meters from home and at the same time to the community of having an important reference center available to all, with an extremely efficient and modern gym.

While the project has grown and the construction site has advanced, with Ernesto Giuseppe Alfieri who succeeded Gualtieri as president of the Foundation in 2017, in 2018 Ravenna hosted the annual international conference of the Byron Society which designated the former Roman imperial capital and Byzantine as the only Italian headquarters of the same Society, dedicated to preserving, disseminating and consolidating Byron’s culture and knowledge throughout the world with conferences, debates, conferences and meetings. The official settlement deed of the Byron Society in Ravenna will be signed on May 25th.

After the inevitable stop due to the pandemic, work resumed at the Palazzo Guiccioli construction site, allowing the last phase of the installations to open the Museum of Byron and the Risorgimento to Europe and the world in the marvelous rooms in which the English poet lived and he wrote of the ‘Fatal gift of Beauty’. A beauty that Ravenna will experience tomorrow in the triple event organized to celebrate the bicentenary of Byron’s death: the official presentation of the Byron Museum to the press and authorities with presidents Alfieri and Patuelli, the guided tour for those who booked first on the portal Palazzo Guiccioli and the evening show with Franco Nero at the Basilica of San Francesco.