by Anna Zonari*
By typing “Museo della Resistenza Ferrara”, this communication comes out from the Municipality’s website: “The Museum is closed to the public until a date to be set due to the transfer of headquarters”. Since summer 2020 everything it contained has been removed, the offices transferred to Porta Paola until further notice, awaiting the new headquarters, located in Palazzo Pico Cavalieri, the renovation of which is underway and has been since summer 2023. In the former spaces of the Museum there has long been the bar of the Palazzo dei Diamanti. You could choose to move the Museum to another suitable location or leave it in limbo. Limbo was chosen.
25 April 2024: we ask that the reopening of the Museum becomes a priority, with the identification of a suitable location, rethinking everything, to finally give the city a museum about its history in a large location, with spaces for teaching. We ask that those who today deal with historical research and documentation be put in a position to be able to use the tools that the city already has at its disposal, to make up for the loss of the human and moral heritage made up of the partisans in flesh and blood. Without a physical location the Museum cannot express its potential, such as dissemination and training activities.
The memories of history, of anti-fascism, of the Resistance, must be a tool for interpreting today! Antifascism is an important word, which must be pronounced, promoted and practiced with all possible tools. It is a question of asking ourselves, today, what it means to recognize and prevent the roots of fascism and to do so, questioning the reality we live in the present: protecting freedom of expression and pluralism, defending minorities and reducing injustices, denouncing discrimination and repression of dissent.
The Museum was inaugurated in 1903, in honor of the Ferrara patriots Giacomo Succi, Domenico Malagutti and Luigi Parmeggiani: it collects weapons, uniforms, memorabilia, photographs, posters and Ferrara and national documents from the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1954 the section dedicated to the Italian Resistance was added; on this occasion the original “Museo del Risorgimento” changed its name to “Museum of the Risorgimento and Resistance”. The Museum, even in these last very tiring four years, has continued to collaborate with the city’s high schools: the courageous exhibition “All guilty, all acquitted” on the atrocities committed by the fascist regime in the colonial period, created in collaboration with the Liceo “L .Ariosto” and the recent Pcto project with a Computer Science class of the ITI “Copernico – Carpeggiani”, which allowed the setting up of a computer program for cataloging and viewing the Museum’s materials, now in storage. The collaborations maintained with the Anpi and the Institute of Contemporary History are also important.
Without a headquarters, however, the potential of a Museum that could and should expand its research and dissemination activities are, in fact, almost eliminated, despite the commitment of those who work there. This year Ferrara will celebrate the Liberation for the fourth time with the Museum of the Risorgimento and the Resistance without a headquarters.
W anti-fascist Italy!
*candidate for mayor for the Municipality of Ferrara
