The Roman School Museum at the Nobile Casino di Villa Torlonia reopened in Rome – Carlo Franza’s blog

From Wednesday 17 September 2025In the Nobile casino of the museums of Villa Torlonia, reopened to the public the Roman School Museum At the end of the reinforcement project promoted and cared for by Capitoline Superintendency and made in collaboration with Zètema Culture Project. He contributed to the initiative BNL BNP Paribas, which has made 60 works of its artistic heritage available, including the exclusive series of views of the capital known as “Rome Collection”.

The scientific project was curated by Federica Pirani, Claudio Crescentini, Antonia Rita Arconti, Annapaola Azzati and Elena Scarfò, the setting up by Stefano Busoni and Andrea Pesce Delfino.

Almost twenty years after the first inauguration, the Roman school museum has now been rethought according to more modern Museographic, didactic and inclusiveness criteria, according to a story built for thematic sections that identify the main contexts (The school in via Cavour; The artists of Villa Strohl Fern), artistic movements and expressions (Faces and bodies; Artistic languages ​​between the two wars) of the period.

The special focus on Rome (Roman landscapes; Construction sites; City without myth; The ‘Rome collection’) was designed to offer a different gaze on the city, telling its landscape and the great urban and social changes that occurred between the two world wars.

The new exhibition itinerary includes Over 150 works between paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings of the twentieth century belonging to the permanent collection or acquired on loan of use (by private or other institutions) but also masterpieces usually not visible to the public and little known, mostly preserved in the deposits of the superintendency or in private collections.
From the “return to order” and from the reinterpretation of the Italian tradition of artists such as Carlo Socrates And Quirino Ruggeri to the “magical realism” of Antonio Donghi, Francesco aCoconut Lessandro, Francesco Trombadori, Riccardo Francalancia; from visionary expressionism of Ferruccio Ferrazzi and the anti-academic art of the artists of the School of via Cavour (Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphaël, Scipione) to the tonalism of Corrado Cagli, Emanuele Cavalli, Roberto Melli and Guglielmo Janni. And then again the documentary realism of Eva Quajotto, Antonio Barrera, Domenico Quattrociocchi and Odoardo Ferretticoming to the new realistic language matured, close to the Second World War, by authors such as Alberto Ziveri, Fausto Pirandello, Renato Guttuso and the young man Renzo Vespignani. In addition to Raphaël and Ruggeri, there are other protagonists of sculpture such as Pericles Fazzini, Mirko Basaldella, Leoncillo Leonardiand a master of engraving as Luigi Bartolini.

In addition to Quajotto and Raphaël, there are many female voices present: Edita Broglio, Leonetta Cecchi Pieraccini, Adriana Pincherle, Katy Castellucci, Pasquarosa, Maria Immacolata Zaffuto and Maria Letizia Giuliani Melisin continuity with the exhibition projects recently set up in the other museum offices of Villa Torlonia (Casino dei Principi and Casina delle Civette), with which the Capitoline Superintendency wanted to rediscover and re -establish the art and personality of artists who gave an important contributed to the cultural and artistic life of the twentieth century Rome.

The renewed setting also makes use of the precious collaboration started with BNL BNP Paribasof which some are exhibited valuable works of the art collection, Including the famous series of the views of the capital, known as the “Rome collection”.
These are 54 identical format works (20 × 26 cm) made, between 1946 and 1948, by important artists of the period such as Mario Mafai,

Filippo de Pisis, Renato Guttuso, Giorgio De Chirico, Alberto Savinioyoung talents like Afro, Fausto Pirandello, Renzo Vespignani And others, called to confront the theme “Aspects of the city of Rome”. The “Rome collection” was born to a happy intuition of the famous writer, screenwriter and journalist Cesare Zavattini who created and commissioned it for the film producer Ferruccio Caramelli. Since 1983 the collection has become part of the art collection of BNL BNP Paribas which has now counts over 6 thousand works.
The bank is engaged in a constant activity of loans and collaboration for the spread of art and culture.

Finally, there are some paintings that testify to the important urban changes and over the thirties and which intend to pay homage to the city of Rome which saw several artists (they intended to testify to several artists (Demolitions in Piazza Navona Of Eva Quajotto, Temple of Venus And Rome during the demolitions for the construction of via dell’Ampero Of Domenico Quattrociocchi, Demolitions in via Montanara Of Odoardo Ferretti); the transformed landscape of the Composition Of Francesco Alessandro di Cocco (1930); The Workers (1925-1940) painted by Maria Immacolata Zaffuto recovering the ancient tense technique; The iconic portrait made by the painter Amerigo Bartoli Nigino To the famous critic and art historian Roberto Longhi (1924) which identified the “School of via Cavour”, in fact the first artistic nucleus from which the Roman school moved.

With the rearrangement of the museum space, a thematic and visual path that unites different narratives takes shape, which intertwine and completed to form a single, complex story about art and the city. Even the didactic devices have been enhanced and enriched with information content, images, videos (thanks to the collaboration of the Archive of the Istituto Luce) and audio that can be used via QR Code, with particular attention to accessibility.

Carlo Franza