Museo del Risorgimento

On the ground floor of Udine's castle, a compact civic museum follows Friuli from the collapse of the Venetian Republic in 1797 to annexation by the new Kingdom of Italy in 1866, and on towards the First World War, through uniforms, letters, flags and keepsakes given by local families and veterans' associations.

Why it matters

Few regional museums tell the Risorgimento from as peripheral — and as telling — a vantage point. Friuli only joined Italy in 1866, the third and final act of unification, after half a century as an Austrian possession carved out of the fallen Republic of Venice. The museum's subject spans the Treaty of Campoformido, signed on Friulian soil in 1797, through the province's 1866 entry into the Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel II. There is a quiet aptitude in the setting: the castle itself became a civic museum on 26 July 1906, during celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of that union, so the building and the collection commemorate the same event. After decades of closure, the display was redesigned and the museum reopened in March 2013.

What to notice

The museum's five rooms cover the fall of the Venetian Republic and French occupations, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and Restoration, the uprisings of 1848–49, Friuli's 1866 annexation, the press and censorship, and the Garibaldian movement. Among the exhibits are Garibaldian uniforms, correspondence of Giuseppe Mazzini, the flag of Osoppo, engravings, a bust of the Friulian writer Caterina Percoto and Gerolamo Induno's 1860 canvas of the Thousand leaving Quarto. The collection includes a large-scale diorama of the 1859 Battle of Montebello, built by Fabio Fiorentin and Enrico Zamparutti for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, and reconstructed prison cells recalling political detention.

Context and history

The collection is a mosaic of donations rather than a princely purchase. Its core came from the Società Veterani e Reduci delle Patrie Battaglie, the association of veterans of the wars of independence, and from the fondo Fantoni, with later additions covering the Great War, whose front ran through this region. Documents, uniforms and memorabilia were accumulated precisely because families wanted local heroes remembered where they had lived. The book collection and the Luxardo holdings of periodicals were later transferred to the library, leaving the gallery free for objects with a direct biographical charge. The museum shares the ground floor of the castle with the Archaeological Museum: the present building was begun after the earthquake of 26 March 1511, its first stone laid on 2 April 1517 to designs associated with the Lombard architect Giovanni Fontana, with later work by Giovanni da Udine, who designed the external staircase in 1547, and by Francesco Floreani, who completed the Sala del Parlamento in 1566.