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Centrale Montemartini Museum: wherever classical art meets industrial anthropology - Have you noticed all the excitement round the hashtag #MuseumWeek?
All this excitement for our cultural heritage created ME set up a visit to 1 of my favorite museums in Rome: the Centrale Montemartini repository, a former electricity station hosting associate degree exhibition of marble statues from Ancient Rome.
Giovanni Montemartini electricity station was inaugurated in 1912, marking the start of the industry of the Ostiense neighbourhood.
It was a electricity powerhouse with 2 completely different production systems (diesel engines and steam turbines) operating to remodel energy into electrical power.
These 2 production cycles worked along from the start, facultative the Montemartini station offer|to supply|to produce} {different|totally completely different|completely different} services to different demands: steam turbines were ready to provide
The plant was very innovative and up-to-date for its time; it might work on full capability and it provided the city with electricity even throughout the war, because it was the sole facility to be spared from bombs.
Eventually, the plant became obsolete and it absolutely was completely abandoned in 1963, once no any improvement would are convenient.
This quite common destiny for all the factories during this space delivered to the transformation of the previous industrial district of Rome into a rusty space choked with trendy ruins attenuation away: whereas a number of them were destroyed, many others are reconverted, as within the case of the Giovanni Montemartini electricity station.
Following the instance of different European countries concerning the conservation of the commercial heritage, ACEA (Rome’s Council-owned Utility) wished to revive the structure of Rome’s initial public station and switch it into a “museum of energy and water”.
And so the Boiler space, the room and their basement rooms, that were still housing the machinery, were opened to the general public and have become a repository space wherever, in 1995, virtually four hundred sculptures coming back from the Capitoline Museums were hosted.
This particularly hanging combination started as a fortuitous coincidence, as in 1995 many areas of the Capotoline Museums were closed to the general public to be restored and every one their collections of Roman statues and ancient mosaics chemical analysis from Republican Era to the late Imperial Age were touched to the previous thermoelectrical station.
The juxtaposition between the classical marble statues and therefore the industrial location was thus triple-crown that in 2005, once the renovation works at the Capitoline Museums complete, several sculptures were left within the previous station.
The exhibition, entitled “the machines and therefore the Gods”, brings along 2 opposed sides of Rome’s anthropology heritage: classical and industrial.
The set-up of this classical exhibition within a former industrial advanced, associate degree operation unexampled in Rome, marked a vital transition for the Ostiense district, that is currently turning into a vicinity dedicated to culture and nightlife.
