MART – Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto

A glass dome forty metres across, lifted over a former courtyard on Corso Bettini, signalled that this alpine city had joined the map of European modern art when the building opened in 2002. Under Mario Botta's design, MART ties the artistic memory of Trento and Rovereto into one institution.

Why it matters

MART is the principal modern and contemporary art institution of Trento and Rovereto, created to join the collections and programmes of the two cities under one organisation. Its Rovereto seat, opened in 2002 on Corso Bettini, was designed by the Ticinese architect Mario Botta with the Rovereto engineer Giulio Andreolli, and the building itself has become part of the argument: a stone volume set behind eighteenth-century palazzi, crowned by a dome compared to the Pantheon's. The museum also keeps the Archivio del '900 and manages the Casa d'Arte Futurista Depero, which makes it the hub of an entire circuit rather than a single exhibition hall.

What to notice

The circular courtyard is covered by a glass-and-steel dome forty metres in diameter and twenty-five metres high. The museum compares its proportions to the Pantheon; a central fountain recalls a Roman impluvium. The galleries receive light through 183 skylights and have facades clad in yellow Vicenza stone, chosen to relate to Palazzo del Grano, Palazzo Alberti, the Teatro Zandonai and Palazzo dell'Annona along the corso. The museum spans four levels, including a basement archive. Galleries face the courtyard and a glass-and-steel walkway crosses the entrance road; a stepped annular passage forms part of the architecture around the courtyard. On the mountain side, the Sculpture Garden, inaugurated in 2006, is a green terrace built onto the roof of the underground garage and conceived by Botta as a hortus conclusus. Around the courtyard, the museum keeps company with the city's Biblioteca Civica and the Auditorium Fausto Melotti.

Context and history

The project dates to the late 1980s, the foundation stone was laid in 1997, and the building opened in 2002, completing a long-held ambition to give Trentino a museum of modern art of the first rank. The whole complex spreads over 29,000 square metres, some 5,000 of them gallery space. The Ministry of Culture's contemporary architecture census credits the design to Botta and Andreolli and situates the complex behind the eighteenth-century front of Corso Bettini, between the historic centre and the public gardens. The institution combines its twentieth-century archival mission, represented by the Archivio del '900, with exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.