The FAI Spring Days are back, to “take care of heritage by telling it”

They return on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March FAI Spring Daysthe most important street event dedicated to the cultural and landscape heritage of our country: 750 places in 400 cities will be open to visitors for free, thanks to the volunteers of 350 delegations and FAI groups active in all regions (here is the list of places and methods of participation).

The FAI Spring Days are confirmed in their thirty-second edition as one of the most important and significant events for learning about the Italian cultural and landscape heritage. An exclusive opportunity to discover a lesser-known Italy, of usually inaccessible places, from large cities to villages, from real monuments to curious and unpublished places, which nevertheless equally tell the story of the thousand-year-old, very rich and multifaceted culture of our country. A way to contribute to the protection and valorization of this heritage, which must first and foremost be known, frequented, and even before that, told. This is the mission of the FAI, as the president of the Italian Environment Fund Marco Magnifico says: “Take care of the heritage by telling it”. And again: “Narrating the cultural heritage to educate the community to protect it and take care of it: from this necessity the FAI Spring Days were born in 1992, giving life, and then body, and then strength to an impressive voluntary structure – the FAI Delegations – who with exceptional enthusiasm and tenacity in these thirty-two years have opened 15,540 forgotten or difficult to visit places to the public, telling them, in fact, with simplicity and passion to as many as 12 million 515,000 citizens. To the benefits of this story, another has now been added: that of physicality and the role it has for true learning.”

Here are some of the most interesting openings (further information available in the attached document): a Roma the Ministry of Agriculture will open on an extraordinary basis and you will admire the very rich Parlamentino, with sumptuous Art Nouveau decorations, the Minister’s study, the reception room and the Library, which houses almost a million documents. Furthermore, in the complex of the former Magazzini Generali, along the Tiber, the public will be able to discover the ISA, the Istituto Superiore Antincendi, the highly specialized school for the management of the Fire Brigade, built in an industrial archeology complex and the Diving Unit.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Rai television broadcasts, the seventeenth-century Palazzo Labia in Veneziaoperational and representative headquarters of the Rai del Veneto since 1964. Furthermore, the Piedmontese Academy of Violin Making will be exceptionally revealed, in the nineteenth-century Monumental Complex of San Filippo Neri, where FAI members, accompanied by the students themselves, will be able to discover the laboratories where bowed and plucked instruments are designed, built and tested.

A Milano the public will discover the Dolce&Gabbana Beauty headquarters, created in 2023 in the spaces of the former nineteenth-century monastery in via Kramer, the setting for an important architectural recovery and redevelopment project carried out by the brand. Furthermore, the monumental building that houses the DLA Piper law firm, a stone’s throw from the Duomo, built between 1938 and 1941 based on a design by Cesare Scoccimarro, will be accessible for the first time: the “vertical” route will allow you to go up to the seventh floor , to enjoy a magnificent view of the city from the terrace, and then descend into the labyrinthine air raid shelter.

A Napoli the Rectorate and the historic Aula Magna of the Federico II University will open for FAI members, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of its foundation, environments restored following the 1980 earthquake under the direction of Nicola Pagliara, former professor of architectural design of the university.

In the heart of Bologna will open one of the most important places for Italian musical culture, the Teatro Comunale, currently closed for renovation works. You will admire the Respighi Foyer with its splendid bronze bas-reliefs of Wagner and Verdi, then enter the Hall, now without the usual seats, and the “Mystical Gulf”, the Orchestra Pit, until you go on stage.

A Messina it will be possible to enter Palazzo Piacentini, the Court, inaugurated in 1928, and observe the places where the magistrates exercise their functions. It will be possible to visit the Courts, appreciating the symbolism linked to the divine role of the law.

A Pesaro, Italian Capital of Culture 2024, you can visit Villa and Miralfiore Park, with refined Renaissance decorations and a remarkable Italian garden, whose environments are enriched by a private museum dedicated to objects in curved glass and designed by the great names of contemporary design , from Munari to Libeskind, from Fuksas to Pomodoro; the sixteenth-century Church of the Name of God, a jewel of art with a rich decorative apparatus that echoes the Venetian school; Palazzo Ducale, over the centuries the city’s fulcrum of power, today the seat of the Prefecture.

A Castiglione Torinese you will get to know the Smat Purification Plant, the largest in Italy, an excellence from the point of view of technology and sustainability because it was designed to carry out urban wastewater treatment and purification activities with a reduced environmental impact.

A Tortoli (NU) it will be possible to enter the nineteenth-century lighthouse of Capo Bellavista – Arbatax, only on Saturday 23 March, one of the most important in Sardinia, which houses the old French-made lantern located 165 meters above sea level. * Among the grandiose buildings of the eighteenth century, Palazzo Gaifami in Brescia, today the seat of the White Cross, with spectacular frescoes by Carlo Innocenzo Carloni, recognized as artistically equal to Tiepolo.

A Taranto you will discover the Maritime Military Arsenal, inaugurated in 1899, which today consists of four sectors – the direction, the combat systems area, the platform area and the distributed services area – and houses the interesting Arsenal Historical Exhibition (Mo .SA) with naval memorabilia.

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In line with “Genoa in the Middle Ages 2024“, a cultural project that the Municipality dedicates to the Genoese Middle Ages, the Church of Nostra Signora del Carmine e Sant’Agnese will open in the Ligurian capital, one of the rare examples of a Gothic church still existing in Genoa, the former Abbey of San Bernardino, almost completely destroyed during the Second World War and subject to recent restorations and the Church of San Bartolomeo dell’Olivella.

In Marsala (TP) it will be possible to exceptionally discover the various phases of the restoration, still in progress, of the wreck of the cargo ship called Marausa 2, occasionally identified in July 2020, then recovered from July to September 2023, preserved in excellent conditions thanks to the silt and to posidonia in the sandy bottoms of the coast of western Sicily.

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Marquis Boso Roi – who left to the FAI the villa on Lake Como where the writer Antonio Fogazzaro wrote “Piccolo Mondo Antico”, today regularly open to the public – Palazzo Roi in Vicenza, renovated in 1891, will exceptionally open in Lombard style with elegant references to Venetian lagoon models: a unique opportunity to admire its prestigious spaces, now home to the Giuseppe Roi Foundation, whose statutory object is to support the museums and culture of Vicenza.

You will be able to walk among the historic villages such as Vallebona (IM) – only on Sunday 24 March – a pearl suspended between the sea and the sky, far from the large tourist flows of the Ligurian Rivieraand Pisticci (MT) whose historic centre, with the Terravecchia and Dirupo districts, stands on a peak of Mount Finese, immersed in the landscape of the gullies.

A It makes (CS), in one of the largest campuses in Italy, the University of Calabria will open STAR (Southern Europe Thomson Back-Scattering Source for Applied Research), a sophisticated national-level research infrastructure for investigations into materials, functional to various fields, from biomedicine to archaeological finds, up to nanotechnologies.

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A Montelupo Fiorentino (FI) it will be possible to visit the industrial archive of the Vittoriano Bitossi Foundation, founded in 2008 and dedicated to the entrepreneur Cavaliere Vittoriano Bitossi, which preserves – in addition to a fund documenting the history of the family and the manufacturing – a rich collection of ceramic works produced in the furnace in collaboration with great designers such as Piero Fornasetti, Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi and Matteo Thun.

Ad Agrigento The nineteenth-century Villa Genuardi, now the seat of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, will be open to visitors, characterized by a magnificent garden, full of rare botanical specimens, commissioned by the lawyer Enrico Ragusa, who in 1875 took over the residence to transform it into one of the most prestigious hotels of Girgenti.