Museo civico del Risorgimento

The organizing committee of the Civic Museum of the Risorgimento was formed in 1893, in the wake of the Risorgimento exhibition organized within the National Exhibition in Turin in 1884; it included, among others, Charles Boni, director of the Museo Civico, Luigi Picaglia and Joseph Benedict Malmusi Triani, rector of the University and president of the Provincial Council. The first group of objects and documents, essentially the same ones that were sent to Turin, found a place in a hall of the Civic Museum opened in 1894. Due to the growing interest from the citizens which increased greatly collections, was enlarged and moved several times. The second inauguration was significantly February 3, 1896, to coincide with that of the monument to Nicola Fabrizi; then in 1901, was transferred to a large room now occupied by the Biblioteca Estense; finally, in 1924, found its permanent home in the current two ground floor rooms of the Palazzo of the Museums. The collections not only cover the participation of Modena to the national events of the Risorgimento, but documenting the antecedent Napoleonic era with a raid on the situation of the Duchy of Este and the subsequent wars of the twentieth century, particularly the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12, and the First World War, now considered the ultimate act of Independence Italian. The exhibition, prepared between 1924 and 1926 in the premises of the museum, was revised in 1937 with the inclusion of a section on the celebratory "Fascist Revolution", eliminated after the war, and finally in the sixties. Apart from the adjustments, the examination of the documents shows that the exhibition project was substantially on the same line, thus presenting himself at the turn of the '90s is now inadequate as well for its educational-museological appearance as for obvious conservation problems that bore down on almost all the materials on display. In that year the museum was closed to the public and materials, placed within crates and transferred to a deposit, have been entrusted to the Museum of Art. There are ongoing photographic campaign and filing of over 2.000 exhibits of the museum, the library consists of about 1.500 volumes, the documentary collection of brochures and autographs, and more than 2.500 photographs.