Casa Bellonci, historic home of the Strega Prize, becomes a museum

Casa Bellonci, the historic home of the Strega Prize, is now a museum: the inauguration took place on Nov. 30, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Maria Bellonci’s birth, and the ceremony was attended by Giovanni Solimine, president of the Foundation, Miguel Gotor Assessore alla Cultura di Roma Capitale, Flavia Mazzarella, president of BPER Banca, Giuseppe D’Avino, president of Strega Alberti Benevento, and Melania Mazzucco, writer, president of the Strega Prize Steering Committee, coordinated by Stefano Petrocchi, director of the Foundation.

Since 1951, the house in Via Fratelli Ruspoli in Rome has hosted the meetings of the Amici della Domenica: it has thus over time been a meeting place for the protagonists of Italian literature of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, and is still a meeting place for the world of publishing, theater, cinema and art. From the collaboration between institutions and businesses and thanks to the friendship between Maria and Goffredo Bellonci and Guido Alberti, an industrialist with a passion for culture, the Strega Prize was born in 1947.

Once the home of the Bellonci couple, the house preserves their great book, archival and art-historical heritage. These range from the book collections kept in the study of Goffredo, one of the most influential journalists and literary critics of the first half of the twentieth century, to the numerous first editions of works with dedications and autographs of the greatest Italian writers of the last century.

Through the various rooms, it is also possible to reconstruct the history of more than seventy years of Italian publishing production: if the two long corridors are entirely covered with literary and theatrical works of the twentieth century, Maria Bellonci’s studio contains books on art and history, and the entire documentary material to which the author resorted when writing her novels. The studiolo, on the other hand, was created by the writer as a place of concentration and writing. About 24 thousand volumes, including many first editions that have become extremely rare to this day, are instead kept in the library, and most of the volumes are accompanied by autographed dedications of the authors, testifying to the dense network of relationships that linked the Bellonci family to the main exponents of twentieth-century culture and literature.

The rooms of Casa Bellonci also house paintings and graphic works by artists such as Cagli, Campigli, Capogrossi, De Pisis, Mafai, Mazzacurati, Morandi, Sughi and others. The collection dialogues with books, archival papers, furniture and objects that belonged to the hosts. There are also numerous portraits of Maria Bellonci, created over the years by Wanda Coen Biagini, Arturo Dazzi and Leonetta Cecchi Pieraccini. Also part of the Foundation’s artistic heritage is the historic voting urn made by Mino Maccari for the first edition of the Premio Strega, in 1947, and used until 1980. The urn was recently restored by the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione e il Restauro and is now on display in Florence at the exhibition Women in Balance 1955-1965, at the Ferragamo Museum. Finally, the Foundation preserves the original posters of the Premio Strega, created starting with the LXX edition by some of Italy’s best illustrators: Manuele Fior, Franco Matticchio, Riccardo Guasco, Alessandro Baronciani, Emiliano Ponzi, Lorenzo Mattotti and Olimpia Zagnoli.

The transformation into a House Museum, curated by architect Patrizia Del Vescovo, was made possible thanks to contributions from the Lazio Region and BPER Banca. The public can visit it every Friday starting Dec. 16 by making reservations at www.fondazionebellonci.it

Casa Bellonci, historic home of the Strega Prize, becomes a museum

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