The Tutankhamun Museum in Florence? It is an exhibit that has been going around for years. The problem is another

Arriving in Florence, in the cradle of the Renaissance, and offering a tour between reproductions of Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb and an immersive journey in virtual reality technology to relive the experience of the 1922 discovery. That’s what is being proposed by an exhibition that opened last Aug. 16 at a venue in Florence’s Piazza Duomo 6 , which jumped to headlines following an Aug. 25 Corriere Fiorentino article. The Florentine newspaper reported that a “Tutankhamun Museum” had been opened in Piazza Duomo inside a few-room apartment within an ordinary apartment building. And since the “museum” is not on the ground floor, large banners of the famous sarcophagus and signs have been placed in the hallway to let tourists passing through the square know about it. Who will pay the ticket in the building’s hallway to an attendant stationed behind a counter. All documented in the field by the Courier reporter who was probably attracted by the blackboard placed outside the doorway with the inscription made with chalk “Tutankhamun Museum, today special price: only 10 euros.”

This is a private initiative that offers wood and plastic replicas of the original archaeological artifacts. However, this is not new: the one in Piazza Duomo is in fact a traveling exhibition under a Florence-based company, Discovery Time srl (which on its instagram profile “Discovery Time” calls itself an “Art and entertainment company. Exhibitions, art and entertainment made also with the use of immersive technologies”), and which has already been taken on a tour in several Italian cities (in Naples at Castel dell’Ovo and in Padua in the former Slaughterhouse Cathedral, for example).

In the publicity posters, this time, however, the initiative is also presented as “Museum of Tutankhamun Florence,” generating some confusion: in fact, sometimes the term “exhibition” is used and it is not clear whether it is a permanent exhibition or whether it will have a limited duration like the stages that preceded it (in fact, the end date is also missing). However, this is not an impromptu stunt by someone who wanted to engineer himself to scrape together some money by taking advantage of the huge tourist flows that invade Florence every day, but a traveling exhibition that has been going around for a few years now. It says on the website of the exhibition itself that the initiative displays “official (Ministry of Egyptian Antiquities) replicas of the most important objects of Tutankhamun’s treasure that frame this incredible exhibition that is embarking on a world tour.” It is not known whether the organizers have collaborated with Egyptian institutions. To a request for comment on the Florentine Courier article, emailed by our editorial staff, the company managing the exhibition did not respond.

In any case, it seems that in the apartment building in Piazza Duomo not everyone has taken it well, so much so that two sisters who own an apartment in the building told the newspaper that they will turn to a lawyer to protect their property, informing moreover that that building is constrained being in Piazza Duomo, after having notified traffic police and carabinieri on the day of the discovery, August 16 (the day of the opening). The families of the two sisters do not live in the building. “We believe that such an activity is detrimental to our property and not only that, and is also detrimental to the decorum of a palace on which there is, to date, the constraint of cultural heritage in the heart of Florence and in front of the Duomo,” the owners declare, also announcing that they have sent a Pec to the Superintendence given the constraint in place. As far as ’permits’ are concerned, however, the exhibition does not need any special authorization to apply to Suap to open a private exhibition. Moreover, one is inside a private apartment: it will be seen in the coming days what the authorities will say from a formal point of view.

Beyond the legal implications, the topic that should be discussed is, if anything, another one. In Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a five-minute walk from Piazza del Duomo, is the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, one of the oldest in Italy, which contains the second largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts and material after that of the Egyptian Museum of Turin. So real artifacts: sure, the museum cannot count on the attraction potential provided by the name of Tutankhamun, but it would be enough to know that in there one can observe authentic objects with more than two thousand years of history and not plastic reproductions. All at a ticket price of 8 euros.

The National Archaeological Museum was inaugurated by King Victor Emmanuel II, and within it we find the Egyptian Museum, which included some antiquities already present since the 18th century in the Medici collections, but was largely increased by merit of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II, who, in addition to acquiring some private collections, financed (together with Charles X, King of France) a scientific expedition to Egypt, led by Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphics, and the Pisan Ippolito Rosellini, his friend and disciple, who was to become the father ofItalian Egyptology. The many objects collected during the trip, either by excavating or by purchasing artifacts from local merchants, were equally divided on their return between the Louvre in Paris and Florence. A respectable museum then, which perhaps should be publicized a bit more to make it clear what it contains. Now, as mentioned, at the Archaeological Museum in Florence the ticket costs 8 euros and at the Egyptian Museum in Turin 18. At the Tutankhamun Museum the full experience costs more, 22 euros, and there is no original material either, but there is a lot of emphasis on being able to have the virtual experience with a 3D viewer. So are we to surrender, and this would be the first breach in the wall, to a world of ancient art and archaeology made of plastic, reproductions and virtual visual experiences at the expense of displaying the real finds from excavations?

The Tutankhamun Museum in Florence? It is an exhibit that has been going around for years. The problem is another

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