Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra (MITAG)

Founded in 1921 in the castle of a town that had just lived through the front line, the Italian Historical War Museum was conceived as a place to study conflict rather than celebrate it. Uniforms, weapons, photographs and everyday objects trace how war shaped lives from the nineteenth century onward.

Why it matters

MITAG is a leading Italian historical museum. Its foundation in the castle of Rovereto in 1921, while the grief of the Great War was still fresh, gave the institution a particular stance: the museum studies wars and their effects on societies, cultures and landscapes instead of exhibiting trophies. Its route follows the experience of men and women in war from the nineteenth century to the Second World War, with the First World War as its gravitational centre — a focus that makes complete sense in a city whose surrounding mountains were the front itself and whose dead are gathered on the hill above.

What to notice

The exhibition occupies two floors. One follows armies and warfare from the nineteenth century through the Great War; the other reads the castle itself and the weapons of the early modern age, so the building becomes an exhibit in its own right. The Artiglierie 1914–1918 section occupies an air-raid shelter dug during the Second World War, with Italian, Austro-Hungarian, German and British artillery pieces displayed against the raw rock. In the Sala Campana, the plaster model and the clapper of the first Maria Dolens bell tie the museum directly to the peace monument that rings above the town every evening.

Context and history

The museum opened in 1921, when Rovereto — an Austrian town until 1918 — had to give meaning to a war that had destroyed much of the surrounding front. The castle, a Venetian fortress held by the Habsburgs until 1918, was chosen as its seat, and the museum has grown into a reference institution for the history of the First World War in Italy, with research, publications and educational programmes that reach well beyond the permanent display. Its centenary in 2021 confirmed that national role, and the museum continues to extend its collections across the modern history of conflict and its consequences for civilians as much as soldiers. Its public reach now runs through channels beyond the walls: the museum produces seminars and school programmes with university partners, and its podcast, made with a national broadcasting house, lets ten objects from the collection tell their own stories.