The Fellini Museum, inserted by the Ministry of Culture among the National Heritage Great National Projects and opened officially in August 2021, spans between Castel Sismondo, Palazzo del Fulgor and Piazza Malatesta. It is part of a cultural pole which includes The Galli Theatre, Part – Palazzi dell’Arte with The Sculptures Garden, The Cinema Fulgor, The City Museum, The Roman Surgeon’s House, The Gambalunga Libray, The Tiberius Bridge with The Square on the Water and Porta Galliana, The Francesca da Rimini Arena, The Arch of Augusto, the Malatesta Temple and Porta Montanara. Conceived as a single structure, the Fellini Museum hosts and promotes the vastness of Fellini’s work in a constant dialogue with different forms of art.
The ‘head’ is the Palazzo del Fulgor, historic seat of the cinema where Fellini watched his first films, which was recreated in 2018 by set designer Dante Ferretti. On its three floors, original material is exposed – sketches, posters, photographs – and thanks to a Digital archive it is possible to study in depth different features of the director’s activity and biography. Place of learning and research, it recalls the traditional editing rooms: a sort of quotation stressed by the presence of The City moviolas – devices conceived to enable the public to process, personally or in group, fragments of film made available by the Museum, like old time editors working with celluloid film.
The body of the Fellini Museum also has ‘legs’, those of the visitors invited to follow a sound path connecting Palazzo del Fulgor to Castel Sismondo, through Piazza dei Sogni, Fellini Museum’s outdoor, which is home to three great environmental installations, the circular bench, which recalls the ending of the film 8½, the veil of water which limits the perimeter of the ancient castle moat; and the wood of names with lanterns designed by poet Tonino Guerra, which evoke the countryside in the film Amarcord.
Finally, the ‘belly’ of Fellini Museum, Castel Sismondo, the ancient town fortress, a place of enchantment, magical discoveries and emotional immersion. Along the rooms in the renaissance building, one can follow a path of multimedia installations, which evoke fragments of Fellini’s sets and his way of shooting, but also his most cherished collaborations and his fertile relationships with 19th century Italian history.
