The value of this work, which involved approximately 30,000 square meters, is to restore to its original unity one of the most important Italian concentrations of documents, cultural, artistic and book assets, reuniting institutions born together, dismembered in the nineteenth century and allowing us to rediscover the original meaning with which one of the most prestigious Italian collections was constituted and organized over time, as well as the link between content and an extraordinary architectural container.
“The New Pilotta of Parma is revealed to the public today in all its splendor. An extraordinary monument, unique in its kind in Italy, is thus returned to its original meaning as an all-round museum, in which every creative expression is represented: from the figurative arts of the National Gallery to the press with the precious testimonies of the Bodoni Museum, from the show in the Farnese Theater to the book collections of the Palatina Library, the inestimable cultural heritage preserved in this museum finally has full dignity and proper valorization. If there was a need for evidence of how necessary the autonomy of state museums was, the New Pilotta is certainly a candidate to be among the clearest and brightest ”
– declared the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.
The interventions carried out are of exceptional value and have involved dozens of people, from officials to restorers, from city institutions to sponsors, to various professionals, not only from the point of view of art history, but also of museology. The Pilotta building is in fact one of the very rare survivals of the experiments that, between the 16th and 17th centuries, led to the birth of museums as characteristic institutions of modern history.
The New Pilotta represents a general rethinking of the only Italian public encyclopedic museum so that it can serve as a tool for intellectual analysis, useful to contemporary society. The last piece of this mosaic is the opening of the archaeological section, completely rethought and redeveloped following the most innovative principles of scientific research, which include references to the acquisitions of New Archaeology, Global History, Connected History and even the so-called Big History.
With this latest return, the New Pilotta della Pilotta becomes accessible again in its entirety and in the form of an international cultural centre, promoter of a dynamic, inclusive museum approach, open to dialogue and participation.
One of the main features of the operation was to redevelop those connective spaces such as the monumental staircase, the vestibule of the theatre, the external area of the courtyards which, neglected by a nineteenth-century museological logic, were in a state of profound degradation and whose function was limited to easement of passage; in the same way, a further action involved places such as the Gallery and the Archaeological Museum which for a long time remained separate organs, disconnected from the body of the building and from its unitary collection history.
A significant part of the work focused on the former National Gallery which, although it presented fewer problems than other institutions, had been waiting for a long time to receive significant care, which had now become urgent, in particular with regard to the safety and restoration of the works. The interventions also included ordinary maintenance, such as the restoration of the plaster, the scientific rethinking of the museum equipment, the technological equipment, including for energy saving. Once the shell was completed, the exhibition was reconsidered in terms of conceptual reflection on the collections, also with regard to the readability of the works, all straddling historical philology, enhancement and contemporary architectural contextualization. A notable example of what was achieved was the recent delivery to the public of the North Upper Wing with seven new rooms dedicated to the most significant exponents of Emilian art between the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which favor a direct connection with the chronological development of the works from the Flemish to the art of Parma Mannerism. Then the rooms of the lower North Wing, or the Farnese Passerella, a viaticum to the halls of ducal portraiture, with a new display of the rich heritage of Renaissance medals and coins and printed volumes never exhibited before, in a philologically perfect parallel between ancient numismatics, Renaissance medals and the history of portraiture.
The Farnese Theatre, a masterpiece from 1618 and the first modern theatre in European history, has undergone a long and elaborate cycle of interventions of various types, from ordinary and extraordinary maintenance to the musealization of spaces previously closed to the public. This is the case of the areas below the steps, previously used as passageways or as warehouses cluttered with disused goods, and now transformed into museum areas thanks to the important reclamation work. For its part, the theatre continues in its original role, that of hosting shows and concerts of undisputed quality and consistent with its history, such as the first edition of the Farnese Festival, the only musical festival in the world of the 17th and 18th centuries, curated by Fabio Biondi and conceived by Simone Verde, which can boast a performance hall contemporary with the proposed repertoire, on whose stage some of the most prestigious ensembles in Italy have alternated.
To make the spectator aware of the extraordinary importance of the Theatre, to invite him to rediscover the appearance and the original use of the hall seriously damaged by the bombings of the Second World War and rebuilt during the 1950s, a video mapping was produced which, through the use of projections, sounds and moving images that made use of original sets, recreates and brings back to the stage that machine of theatrical illusion where some of the ideas and scenic experiments of modern theatre were realized for the first time.
We must not forget the Palatine Library, which has become one of the institutions of the Monumental Complex with its collection of drawings and prints that is unique in the world, its sumptuous rooms, its unrivalled collection of books and documents, including one of the most important collections in the world of Hebrew manuscripts and printed works, second in quality and quantity to that of the library in Jerusalem and coming from the Library of the abbot Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi (1742-1831) who taught oriental languages in the theological faculty of the University of Parma from 1769 to 1821. There were numerous problems that the new management, upon taking office, found itself having to face and resolve: from dirty and dilapidated warehouses to some areas, such as the Galleria dell’Incoronata, which houses the sinopia of the Incoronata by Correggio, intended as a warehouse for waste goods and finally reopened to the public again.
A new face has also been designed for the Bodoni Museum, the first and only one of its kind in Italy, founded in 1963 from a series of precious donations. The collection has in fact been given another destination, on the ground floor of the Complex, characterized by an Empire style aesthetic, contemporary with the printer’s last years of activity. The itinerary displays the entire collection of original punches and printed works, with the possibility of viewing replicas of original presses and using digital aids such as an interactive table and four totems.
With a view to making the New Pilotta a place where the needs of an increasingly wider public can be met and where it can be enjoyed more conveniently and comfortably, the value of the services that contribute to making the experience of the visit complete and, at the same time, to attracting visitors through an offer close to the ordinary forms of contemporary life has certainly not been overlooked. In this direction, the large multimedia and interactive table at the entrance to the West Wing is worth mentioning, which introduces the sections dedicated to the history of Italian art in the Parma collections, through which it is possible to carry out a search by work or by author, which facilitates their location, knowledge of the collection history and in-depth study of the provenance, technical details and various monographic curiosities.
From the essential facilities for a museum, such as the completely redesigned areas of the ticket office, the cloakroom, the new block of toilets and the nursery room, the refreshment area with seats and vending machines, enhanced and entirely refitted to restore an environment previously intended as a storage area, or the Sala Paciaudi of the Palatina Library, returned to the community of Parma after years of neglect and degradation, the new management has made every effort to restore the external areas, such as the Cortile della Cavallerizza, transformed into a garden periodically open to the public and which houses the headquarters of the Associazione Amici della Pilotta.
All these six years of activity can be partly translated by the numbers that not only testify to the quantity of work, but also its value, recognized by the appreciation of the people who daily crowd the rooms and common spaces of the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta.
In six years, the redevelopment and maintenance involved approximately 30,000 square meters, for a cost of €22,399,500.00 million. The restorations involved 62 works from the National Gallery, 102 frames, 185 manuscripts and volumes from the Palatine Library, 550 archaeological finds.
The quality of the projects of the New Pilotta has been well received by the public, which has increased from 120,042 visitors in 2017 to 132,910 in 2022 and 144,882 on 31 October 2023 with a projection of approximately 170,124 visitors on 31 December 2023; consequently, ticket revenues have increased from 476,116.00 in 2017 to 705,101.10 in 2022, with a <.
Nuova Pilotta has carved out a commendable following on social media; from 2017 to 7 July 2023, the increase in followers on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages increased, respectively from 3976 to 18,678, from 2640 to 3257 and from 2509 to 13,600; the website – complessopilotta.it – also saw a growth in unique users from 1,467 to 208,456 and pages visited from 268,658 to 1,357,558 with a monthly average that varied from 24,423 to 35,726.
One of the most significant recent achievements concerns the so-called Sala ottagona della Rocchetta, the first romantic installation in Italy achieved with the return of the works from Paris after the Napoleonic spoliations. This very important achievement for European museography had been damaged by the interventions of the Seventies which had removed, in particular, the furnishing fabrics desired by the director of the Academy, Paolo Toschi, to “sanctuarize” the works of Correggio. After a long work of restoration, research and re-edition of the fabrics from a famous Genoese silk factory, it is inaugurated today, as part of the Nuova Pilotta, restored to its ancient aesthetic appearance.
Parma, November 10, 2023