The Byron and Risorgimento Museum will be inaugurated on 26 October at Palazzo Guiccioli in Ravenna. Part of the memorabilia comes from the Craxi Foundation and part from the Spadolini Nuova Antologia Foundation, whose president Cosimo Ceccuti, former professor of History of the Risorgimento at the Cesare Alfieri Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Florence, has embraced the project to the point of give away part of the Foundation’s precious collection on loan.
Professor Ceccuti, what does a Risorgimento Museum mean in Ravenna, a city that made a decisive contribution to the Unification of Italy?
“I assimilate Florence to Ravenna: two cities with a great history and a Risorgimento vocation that were crucial for Unification. Suffice it to say that Cavour’s plan of Plombieéres, of Italy divided into three States, failed precisely because Tuscany, Emilia and Romagna did not accept the agreements of Villafranca and voted for the union with the Kingdom of Sardinia. Unfortunately, in recent decades the history of the Risorgimento has been downsized, you have to go to small local areas such as Marsala and Caprera to find traces of it while the large cities have somewhat neglected this history. apart from Rome, Milan and Turin. In Florence the Risorgimento Museum was closed a century ago, in 1924, and the material is now sadly collected in boxes in municipal warehouses. The only similar museum in Ravenna is in Giovanni Spadolini’s Villa. where we see every day what it represents for students, for example.”
Tell us what happens…
“Today we are in the era of images rather than words. And for children, especially the youngest ones in elementary and middle school, finding history relived directly through period sources is a very strong emotion. I myself see their reaction. Because the images tell a story made up of heroes, but also of ordinary people, like the Tuscan volunteers who left for Curtatone and Montanara, Garibaldi’s Thousand, those who defended Bologna from the Restoration. These memorabilia become a symbol for young people not only of a history but of an identity, the Unification of Italy comes out of books and becomes a living and shared experience”.
Even more so today when we talk about the need to recover true civil and constitutional values, right?
“It is no coincidence that our Constitution comes from that of Mazzini’s Roman Republic which was even more democratic than ours. These characters and these concepts, which Antonio Patuelli recounts in a beautiful book that compares Mazzini’s constitution and that of the Pope, are fundamental to recover”.
We are waiting to understand in detail what will be visible from your collection in Ravenna…
“We participated in this project with joy: ours is a small participation compared to Bettino Craxi’s Garibaldi collection, but at the same time it is a great participation due to the meaning of the pieces that we will give on loan, all linked to Romagna. For us the memorabilia are the completion of the books: at the Spadolini Nuova Antologia Foundation the library tells the story of the entire Risorgimento, from Mazzini to Vittorio Emanuele II, from Garibaldi to Cavour. And we have the memorabilia that tell how this story was also experienced by the population it wanted to be part of an identity, of an idea, of a movement even in everyday objects, such as snuffboxes, pipes, the most humble objects that recall the country’s desire to have the protagonists of the Risorgimento close to us”.
And then there are the great moments of history relived with the power of the image…
“The museum will have some paper bas-relief portraits of Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II. In particular, the scenes of Garibaldi fleeing from the Austrians in Ravenna in July 1849 or carrying Anita on his shoulders in the swamp recall the most emotional, personal and romantic story of the hero: out of his mind and devastated by the death of his wife, unable to react, he is taken over one by one by the Patriots – starting with Don Giovanni Verità – to open the way for him to escape with thirty thousand Austrians ready to execute the hero and anyone who helped him.”
The image of Pius IX has a history intertwined in Ravenna… “There is in fact a lithograph that portrays him in a boat abandoned to the storm, a metaphor for his situation after the famous speech of 29 April 1948 which “sent neo-Guelphism into the attic” , or the illusion that the Pontiff could place himself at the helm of the national independence movement. The story is in fact closely linked to the Papal Legations of the time, with emblematic posters on D’Azeglio’s visit to Bologna in 1859. Lunetta” in Ancona, the events of 8 May 1949 in Bologna. In the story of the characters of the Risorgimento there is also a more recent and pleasant one”.
Tell it, professor…
“Craxi and Spadolini were political rivals, they competed for the secular area: but they were also friends and both passionate about the Risorgimento, although Craxi was more for Garibaldi who he considered socialist (even if he wasn’t in the Marxist sense) while Spadolini was for the Risorgimento in general, the two often spoke and discussed the Risorgimento and their collections, but it never occurred to them to combine the two collections. Well, I’m pleased to think that thanks to the intuition and commitment of the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation Ravenna there will finally be a museum in which the relics of the two collections will be found together”.
