Casa Mazzini - Museo del Risorgimento

In a narrow street of medieval Genoa, the house where Giuseppe Mazzini was born now holds the city's Museum of the Risorgimento. Its cases gather the era's most charged relics — the anthem's autograph draft, the flag of the Thousand, Mazzini's guitar from London exile — the republican century told from the room where it began.

Why it matters

Genoa gave the Risorgimento three of its defining figures — the prophet Mazzini, the soldier Garibaldi and the anthem-writer Mameli — and this museum keeps their memory under one roof. The civic museums' presentation describes collections of paintings, prints, posters, sculptures, documents, photographs, uniforms, weapons, flags and relics spanning from the eighteenth century to the Second World War and the Liberation. The Visit Genova portal adds the institutional frame: the museum is part of the Istituto Mazziniano, together with its archive and historical library, and covers the arc from the Balilla revolution to the birth of the Republic in 1946.

The setting is the message. The museum has stood since 1934 in the birthplace on Via Lomellini — officially recognised as a national monument — after opening on 5 May 1915 in Palazzo Bianco, on the very eve of Italy's entry into the First World War, in an atmosphere saturated with Mazzinian ideals. The museum presents the unification of Italy as part of Genoa's civic history.

What to notice

The collection includes Mameli's 1847 autograph draft of Canto degli Italiani; the silk Bandiera dei Mille of 1860; Tetar Van Elven's canvas of the departure of Garibaldi's Thousand from Quarto; portraits of Mameli, Mazzini and Garibaldi; and Mazzini's guitar from his London exile. The act of German surrender signed in Genoa on 25 April 1945 extends the story from unification to the city's Resistance; Genoa was the first major Italian city to expel its occupiers.

Context and history

The museum's biography mirrors Italy's. Founded as a Risorgimento shrine while the Great War still hung in the balance, it moved in 1934 into the Lomellini house where Mazzini was born on 22 June 1805, converting a private residence of the patriotic middle class into a public instrument of civic education. The Istituto Mazziniano, whose archive and library operate alongside the displays, keeps the documentary memory of the republican current that Mazzini led from exile.

The museum's presentation includes the Sala dell'Inno, devoted to the national anthem, with braille and easy-to-read supports, and follows the Risorgimento story through the twentieth century. The Rolli-era district of Via Lomellini also contains Palazzo Nicolosio Lomellino; Mazzini's tomb is at the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno.