Roma, Complesso del Vittoriano di Roma
Gipsoteca Hall
31st May – 30th July
 
The exhibition was organised under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Italy in the framework of the initiatives adopted by the Historical-Scientific Committee for the Anniversaries of National Interest, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The curators include the Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento – Central Museum for the Renaissance, ICCU - The Central Institute for the Single Directory of the Italian Libraries, Library of Modern and Contemporary History, National Library of Florence, Institute for the Audio heritage, and Cinecittà Luce.
The exhibition proposes a cultural and historical pathway through the Great War, by means of little known and in some cases unpublished original documentary materials. First included in a website (www.14-18.it), it has become a “real” and interactive exhibition featuring collections on the Great War coming from the most important institutions, and referring to both official sources and folk stories.
The exhibition pathway includes several areas of contents: from war writings (renowned sources but also the transcripts of the letters from the front written by soldiers) telling the war as it was and as it was lived, to the documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlining the historical and diplomatic steps of the Great War (from the Triple Alliance to the Peace Treaties of 1919). A sound pathway accompanies the visual one, linking the First World War to the coeval musical framework and the voices of the protagonists of that time, with folk songs and the speeches by the protagonists of the conflict, from Cadorna to Diaz, from Marinetti to Ungaretti.
Coeval arts is described by the works of futurists (Balla and Marinetti) but also by the rare volumes of the National Library of Florence decorated by very important artists (Leger, Goncharova, Malevič) and never exhibited before. In the first section “La guerra raccontata” visitors will find a selection of photographs and original filmed sequences describing the front through three distinguished examples: the first documentary film in the history of the Italian cinema, “Eroi del mare nostro” (containing the scene of the sinking of the Austrian battleship Santo Stefano by the Mas led by Luigi Rizzo, off the coast of Premuda on 10th June 1918), a filmed sequence dating back to the Twenties, “Dal Grappa al Mare”, also including original documentaries of 1915 and 1916, and the movie “Terramatta” (Italy 2012, directed by Costanza Quatriglio), inspired by the war diary of Vincenzo Rabito, born in 1899, who, during the 1960s, started to typewrite a 1027-pages diary telling the story of a Sicilian semiliterate thrown to the Great War.
A special section of the exhibition is devoted to military courts: a comparison is made between the court decisions against deserters and the judgements of the special military tribunals, featuring a selection of unpublished documents on censorship.
Complesso del Vittoriano
Admission and opening times
Free admission
Open from Mondays to Thursdays, 9.30 a.m. – 6.30 p.m.;
Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 9.30 a.m. – 7.30 p.m.
Last admission: 45 minutes before the closing times
Information desk: Phone 06/6780664