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Historical Museum of Resistance of S. Anna di Stazzema

Historical Museum of Resistance of S. Anna di Stazzema

The Museum lies deep in the green hills of Tuscany, in a place from where you can spot the site where the commemorated massacre took place. The original museum, inaugurated in the fall of 1982, was in the same building, the former village schoolhouse. The project includes its restoration, both on the inside and the outside, and its new setting. The existing building is left essentially unchanged, while a new internal shell creates a totally different space arrangement. The exhibition spaces are wrapped around by plasterboard walls, sloped at different angles.


These white walls, where the display boards are hung, contrast with the dark grey floors and ceilings. Once again, the expressive strength of the colour contrast creates emotional vibes, which flow from the jagged, broken lines of the boards: a new never ending path, representing the pain of the event it tells. Pathos reaches its climax in the room portraying the carnage that took place in the village, room that is entirely covered with red-painted boards.


At the bottom of the boards, the thin red line of an electrocardiogram marks the exhibition, which unfolds under the continuous, repetitive gaze of the murdered children. Slight chromatic changes mark out the exhibition sections; objects, personal accounts, wartime newspapers, pictures and multimedia are used to give a comprehensive description of the events that took place between 1943 and 1945.


The original project also included the construction of an external glass shell, with embedded photovoltaic panels, folding the existing structure, with a striking and touching sign: the phrase “blood and hope” both in German and Italian, to remember the 560 victims.

Project credits

Project data

Project Year
2007
Category
Museums