Record takings in the Civic Museums of La Spezia with over 70 thousand visitors.

In 2023, 70 thousand visitors were close to the Civic Museums of La Spezia, a statistic that returns to the levels recorded in the pre-Covid period and which marks a new point from which to start for a 2024 that will see them even more protagonists in the cultural panorama of La Spezia with exhibitions and events of great national appeal. Even more relevant, the absolute and unprecedented record ever recorded before museum receipts which in 2023 reached 269.102,48 euros and the important resumption of in-person teaching in museums in collaboration with the schools of the entire Province of La Spezia which this year has involved 416 classes for a total of 7195 students.

"An invaluable cultural heritage which in 2023 reached almost 70 thousand visitors: it is as if every citizen of La Spezia had entered one of our museums – declares the Mayor of La Spezia Pierluigi Peracchini – Let's go back to the statistics of the pre-Covid period from the point of view of attendance and this is the first positive result, because the pandemic had not only forced a stop to museum visits but above all had also interrupted the good habits of frequenting places of culture, which I think have been restored this year. The most important data, however, is also that relating to takings: never in the history of the Civic Museums had we reached these figures, almost 270 thousand euros: a data that also helps us to dispel some clichés about culture. All this must lead us to press on the accelerator: the San Giorgio Castle will be the undisputed protagonist of the great cultural events in 2024, with the Palefestival, Nights at the Castle, museum education all year round, Specialis. The Ancient Spice Festival and the monstrous night of October 31st; The Lia, thanks to the agreement with the Lia family on the endowment fund, will see its maximum splendor with a national-level exhibition on the Grand Tour in dialogue with the permanent exhibition of Agostino Fossati at the Palace of the Arts; the Seal Museum will find new light with an opening of the museum directly onto via del prione; the Ethnographic will be increasingly recognized as the Civic Museum "of the City" with projects aimed at enhancing the identity of La Spezia and local history and, clearly, 2024 will be the year of CAMeC which will find a new valorisation with the support of the Carispezia Foundation. 2024 promises to be the year of La Spezia culture. "

The great strength of the Museums in 2023 was characterized by four main elements: theincrease in tourism throughout the city which has clearly also poured into our museums which have been ready to welcome them with a rich and heterogeneous offer, the numerous participation in museum teaching for families and schools which sees a renewed communicative and graphic look with the slogan "Let's have fun learning in museums and libraries", events which are now indispensable in the La Spezia calendar such as the Palefestival,  Nights at the Castle and the new format which immediately won the enthusiasm of people from La Spezia like Specialis. The Ancient Spice Festival and major exhibitions that have also had a strong international appeal such as that of Pieter Brueghel the Younger at the “Amedeo Lia” Civic Museum.

The locomotive of the Civic Museums is the San Giorgio Castle which almost reached 45.000 visitors with revenue of 162.680,50 euros and with a constantly growing trend also thanks to a cultural offer that combines educational and recreational museum activities with historical re-enactment events in the city and now well-known exhibitions. In particular, events of great extraterritorial importance have been promoted from the San Giorgio Castle: the sixteenth edition of thePalefestival” the Festival of experimental popular archeology on the Ancient World, the summer cultural event of the “Nights at the Castle” with 18 events; the first edition of “Specialis. Ancient Spice Festival” which included a three-day re-enactment of the history of the City of La Spezia from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century and the traditional “Monstrous Night” which, after three years of suspension, has once again become the city's flagship evening event on 31 October.

The small Louvre of Liguria, that is, ours “Amedeo Lia” Civic Museum, was the protagonist of a historic turning point in 2023 with the renewed trust agreement on the right to use the works of art owned by the Lia family in favor of the Municipality of La Spezia thanks to an extraordinary synergy: with the new agreement, in fact, the Municipality will be able to afford to valorise the museum on a national and international level since the obligation to set aside 50% of the proceeds has lapsed and an Endowment Fund administered by the Board of Directors has been established. In 2023 the Lia Museum, which it surpassed the 9 thousand visitors with a revenue of 49.573,60 euros, offered citizens three exhibitions each accompanied by a rich calendar of transversal events: “The contemporaneity of the classic. Dialogue on models between Museo Lia and Wolfsoniana", which proposed a dialogue between the two richest and most heterogeneous private collections in Liguria, "Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The Crucifixion of Castelnuovo Magra. Restoration and comparisons“, which made it possible to enhance the troubled work of Crucifixion at the end of the long restoration intervention and put it in dialogue with important loans from Paris, Modena and Pisa and the exhibition on the nativity "Angels long to gaze. The Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Magi” which represents the salvific message that Christ brings with him through a pictorial narrative with large and prestigious paintings on loan including Perugino, Barnaba da Modena, Antonio Travi in ​​perfect dialogue with the permanent collection.

"Through art. The Il Gabbiano gallery 1968-2018","James Green Freeing Art from Artists","The little big heart of Giosetta Fioroni","Futurism and its persistence in permanent collections","Mare Nostrum. The Cinque Terre and the Gulf of Poets","Sarenco. The audience of humanity","Blue/Blue. Works from the CAMeC collections","Antonello Ghezzi. Earth Sky Hyperuranium","Animalia","Igo Salvadori Covid – 19 100 La Spezia. Photographs April May 2020","The new color room" the exhibitions that surprised the 2023 visitors of CAMeC in 8.566 and a collection of 20.910,46 euros. 2023 was, for the Center of Modern and Contemporary Art, a historic year for two reasons. The first because the physical and cognitive barriers of the Museum have been totally demolished thanks to the project financed by the PNRR which has in fact allowed us to haveinput a tactile map of the CAMeC to allow the user to understand where the museum is located and how it is structured; the provision of a totem with a video in Italian Sign Language (LIS), which tells the story of the museum and the collections; the affixing of tactile plantar signals near the stairs and services; the transformation of one of the toilets into a multifunctional toilet also with child-sized sanitary ware; the inclusion of a sink in the teaching laboratory; finally, the new Accessibility Room. This large exhibition space is available to all visitors but is especially dedicated to visually impaired, blind and deaf users who will be able to encounter an installation that breaks down perceptive and sensorial barriers. The second reason is, clearly, the new path of valorisation of the cultural activities of the CAMeC - Center of Modern and Contemporary Art which will lead to the activation of a non-institutionalized public-private partnership between the Municipality of La Spezia and the Carispezia Foundation with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the parties which will see the light in 2024.

Il Civic Ethnographic Museum “Giovanni Podenzana” reached in 2023 i 3180 visitors with proceeds of 31.084,90 euros and offered citizens and tourists the important exhibition "Fossil. Paleontological exhibition dedicated to the great La Spezia scientist Giovanni Capellini on the centenary of his death” in collaboration with the Lunigianese Academy of Sciences Giovanni Capellini and with the precious loans of the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa, the Geological and Paleontological Museum of the University of Bologna and the Municipality of Lerici. The rest of the year was characterized by the Etnografico's participation in the Mazzinian year for the centenary of the death of Ubaldo Mazzini with conferences and specific events, by the organization of the event with Castello San Giorgio Specialis. Ancient Spice Festival which saw the museum host workshops dedicated to nineteenth-century crafts which attracted over 200 people in a single afternoon. The Etnografico is also a privileged venue for local cultural associations dedicated to the study of the local history of La Spezia with which the Museum System collaborates with great synergy.

2023 was the year of the relaunch of Seal Museum which presented to the public a renewed layout of the spaces in which for the first time in the history of the museum the over 300 unpublished seals and designed and created room panels and a detailed brochure - which is offered to visitors together with the entrance ticket to the Museum - and an in-depth itinerary accessible via the QR-Code system which will then be applied to the entire museum itinerary. A renovation, in fact, which brought the museum to 1550 visitors. Finally, the Palazzina delle Arti which hosts the permanent exhibition “The city that changes. La Spezia from Agostino Fossati to the present day” has reached almost a thousand visitors, whose proceeds, including the Seal Museum, are approximately 4.853,02 euros.

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