Ferrucciano Museum, Gavinana

The museum, which had become obsolete in terms of services, accessibility, layout and size, was completely redesigned in collaboration with the scientific committee and under the supervision of the ABAP Soprintendenza.

The design strategy developed an architectural “programme” on which the various disciplines were grafted: museology, museography and the historical documentary interpretation of the exhibits.

The project has brought the new museum into compliance with accessibility standards for all users thanks to the introduction of an internal lift connecting the three floors and an external stair lift on the side staircase connecting to the square. The importance of this small museum hidden in the Pistoia mountains dates back to the central figure of Francesco Ferrucci, to whom the museum is dedicated. Francesco Ferrucci, also known in the Italian national anthem in the passage ‘… Ogn’uom di Ferruccio / Ha il core, ha la mano …’ (Every man of Ferruccio has a heart, has a hand …), is the man who in 1530 attempted to defend Florence from the siege of Charles V in the famous battle of Gavinana, where he died at the hands of Maramaldo, for which Ferrucci’s famous phrase is remembered: ‘Coward, you kill a dead man’. The museum was established in the 1930s and reorganized in the 1950s.

The new museum has been extended to include the second floor of the building, previously a residence, and the basement, where new toilets have been installed, accessible from outside in the event of public events, and the museum’s storage rooms. The building was constructed as a rural mountain dwelling, where the small rooms and steeply sloping walls are concealed by a stone façade built during the 19th century. The project is characterized by simple elements, such as new terracotta flooring and rustic wooden ceilings redecorated in black, which also continues on parts of the walls, creating a sequence of spaces where the foreground and background provide a new context for the reorganization of the exhibits, mainly consisting of paper documents, historical armours, fabrics, etc. The new lighting is characterized by a modular system repeated in each room, consisting of a linear and curved suspension fixture that provides general and spot lighting thanks to adjustable projectors. The only exceptions are the lighting in the cloakroom/reception room, which is provided by a circular full-light fixture, the two distribution corridors, which are recessed into the ceiling, and the staircases, which are lit by wall lights. The design intention that permeated the entire first phase of the building’s redevelopment was to create spaces capable of accommodating a new layout that would introduce visitors to the historical figure.

The exhibition, designed on the basis of the renovation, was conceived as a journey through the life of Ferrucci, from the 16th century to the present day. A journey spanning almost 500 years. An educational museum that also involved numerous local associations throughout the entire construction phase: an open community project in which site coordination meetings were often held in the presence of groups of citizens, as well as technicians and politicians. The exhibition is characterized by oak furnishings, naturally treated wood that marks a line of continuity throughout the exhibition and ideally links back to the defensive palisades reminiscent of the materials used in the past.

The furnishings form self-illuminated display cases, wall panels, frames, three-dimensional displays and platforms. At the same time, wall inscriptions made with stencils mark the themes of the rooms, covering Ferrucci’s life to date, from historic Florentine football (we recall the famous match played on 17 February 1530, which inspired the modern re-enactment) to philatelic reproductions. The curtains, designed differently for each floor, reflect Ferrucci’s colours. Confronting a rural building and transforming it into a place of culture was the greatest challenge, even for the administration, which decided to transform the small pre-existing museum into a contemporary museum where, we hope, a piece of “healthy and honest rural architectural heritage” can be kept alive, which “will perhaps preserve us from academic repercussions and immunise us against pompous rhetoric and, above all, give us the pride of knowing the true indigenous tradition of Italian architecture: clear, logical, linear, morally and also formally very close to contemporary taste” (quoted from G. Pagano and G. Daniel).