Vittoriale turns 100: an exhibition and many events celebrate D'Annunzio's home

In February 1921, Gabriele D’Annunzio (Pescara, 1863 - Gardone Riviera, 1938) entered for the first time what would later become the Vittoriale degli Italiani. “I take possession of this votive land that is given to me as my lot: and here I place the signs that I bore with me, the mute powers that led me here”: with these words D’Annunzio entered his new home. And exactly one hundred years later, the Vittoriale is preparing to celebrate itself and its history. On Sunday, June 20, in fact, starting at 11 a.m., the Vittoriale Park will commemorate the important anniversary by inaugurating new exhibitions and welcoming new gifts. For the occasion, entrance to the park will be free throughout the morning, from opening to 1 p.m.

Welcoming the public will be a fully restored Vittoriale, as D’Annunzio said, “a monument to his inimitable life. ”The president of the Fondazione Vittoriale, Giordano Bruno Guerri, has brought to completion the Reconquista project, which included the restoration and reopening of all the spaces of the complex so that visitors will find, in the centennial year, a Vittoriale open in every place, as the Vate wished it to be. The many projects completed in more than a decade of work include the restoration and reopening of the Vallette, the Dancing Pond, the Kennel, the Arengo, the creation of the d’Annunzio segreto, d’Annunzio ritrovato, d’Annunzio eroe and L’Automobile è femmina museums. And still other recoveries were those of the Laghetto del Mas, the Giardino delle Vittorie, the Portal, and the entrance avenue, as well as the interventions to recover the fabrics of the Priory. A milestone in this journey was the completion of the Amphitheater, the Parlaggio, which was inaugurated in its new red Verona marble look, thanks to a grant from the Lombardy Region, in July 2020. Finally, in the presence of Stefano Bruno Galli, Lombardy Region’s Councillor for Autonomy and Culture, the last spaces restored during the last year’s closures will be inaugurated: from Piazzetta Dalmata, with the facade of the Prioria, home of the Vate, to Piazzetta dell’Esedra, passing by the S.V.A-the plane with which he flew over Vienna on August 9, 1918.

“Restorations, works of art, reopening of spaces are the most visible aspect of the work done by the Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation in recent years,” Guerri says. “But there has also been less conspicuous and perhaps more important activity: the acquisition of an enormous amount of documents, both published and unpublished, an increase in studies parallel to that of visitors, and above all the change of a vulgate about Gabriele d’Annunzio accumulated over more than a century of prejudice (which debased the complexity of a brilliant innovator) and which is gradually crumbling. We will continue to work in these two directions.”

The celebrations also pass through an exhibition: One Hundred and One Hundred and One Hundred Years of the Vittoriale, a tribute-exhibition curated by Giordano Bruno Guerri himself, which will propose an itinerary that will allow us to understand how d’Annunzio conceived and realized the citadel, thanks to the contribution of the many artists who decorated its rooms, but especially thanks to Giancarlo Maroni (Arco, 1893 - Riva del Garda, 1952). It is precisely the meeting with the young architect from Trentino that radically changes d’Annunzio’s approach to space; the gulf that initially divides them (Maroni has a purely technical background) becomes the strong point of a union that succeeds in shaping the D’Annunzio citadel, a veritable small principality populated by the court d’Annunzio loves to surround himself with. The two created the interiors, constructed new buildings (including the grandiose Schifamondo wing that was to have housed the poet’s new home and the Archives towers with their lakeside loggias), set the Nave Puglia into the hillside with its prow looking out over the lake as if it still ploughed the waters of the Adriatic, designed the mausoleum for the poet’s burial beside his heroic companions, the open-air theater, the hangar for the MAS (the latter major construction sites finished only after the poet’s death), they transformed, furnished and shaped the park with its rios, lemon house, terraced garden, Dancing Pond, Arengo and the many corners that make the Vittoriale a place of great charm and attraction, with a resounding view of Lake Garda. Testifying to the enormous preparatory and management work of the Vittoriale Factory, the Vate’s first letter to Maroni, Schifamondo’s drawing with the poet’s date and signature, and one of the architect’s wooden models, completely restored for the occasion, will be on display. The exhibition continues by traversing the great themes of d’Annunzio through “symbolic objects”: from music to sports, from the love of dogs to the genius of the Vate at the service of the great Italian brands, passing through the women of the Vittoriale.

But the year of D’Annunzio’s centenary also meets with a happy coincidence the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death: to commemorate the deep bond that united Gabriele d’Annunzio to Dante, and to celebrate the important contribution they both made to the development of the Italian language, the Vittoriale will host a first exhibition, #DantePOP, by artist Sandra Rigali, which aims to tell the story of the Poet and his worldview by highlighting the strong link between Dante’s work and today’s society.

Special guests of the day-long celebration will be Lucrezia Hardouin di Gallese and Federico d’Annunzio, descendants of the Vate, Lorenzo Sospiri, president of the Abruzzo Regional Council, and director Gianluca Jodice, who will show some fragments and talk about the film The Bad Poet, a tribute to the last years of d’Annunzio’s life. A work from the Seme series, the now famous creation by Emilio Isgrò, which the great artist wanted to call Aligi, in homage to a protagonist of d’Annunzio’s tragedies, will also be inaugurated: it will enrich the open-air museum that has become the Vittoriale garden in recent years, in the lawn in front of the MAS. Finally, the summer festival Tener-a-mente, which returns with rich programming after its year-long obligatory hiatus, and the presentation of the brand new online store GardaMusei, and the many products it will welcome. Vittorialmente is an event sponsored by the Brescia Chamber of Commerce and the Associazione Amici del Vittoriale.

Vittoriale turns 100: an exhibition and many events celebrate D'Annunzio's home

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