When President Sergio Mattarella accompanies King Charles III and Queen Camilla to open their eyes to the magic of Piazza San Francesco, the city of Ravenna will make headlines worldwide, once again donning the mantle of the ancient imperial capital whose still intact monuments will be shown to these Heads of State and billions of TV viewers. Ravenna’s ability not only magnificently to preserve but also to recover and make accessible its living history and culture finds a stunning, recent testimony in the Byron and Risorgimento Museums, which, just four months after their inauguration, will be one of the central stops during this extraordinary visit made by the British Heads of State.
The bond between the Byron Museum, in particular, and the British is strong—not only for obvious cultural and literary reasons concerning the great poet and master of Romanticism, who for four months has been attracting the interest of the entire English-language press through the Byron Museum. But The Queen’s Reading Room, the charity founded and now led by the Queen herself, which promotes the benefits and power of reading worldwide, is the ideal meeting point between Great Britain and the newly inaugurated Museum, whose rooms beautifully evoke the British atmosphere that animated Byron’s years in Italy and inspired some of his most famous works. ‘With their extraordinary capacity to educate and inspire,’ writes the Queen, ‘books by authors from all over the world have enriched me throughout my life.’ And part of this enrichment will also come from the splendid rooms of the Byron Museum, where the life, works, and memorabilia of the poet are told and can be experienced with the powerful force of digital technology, capable of immersing every visitor into the reality, thoughts, and atmosphere of those years.
The Byron Museum, which is also the headquarters of the Italian Byron Society, will therefore for one day also serve as the Italian section of the Queen’s Reading Room, where naturally the British poet will be the central protagonist.
Conceived twenty years ago by the President of the Cassa di Ravenna Antonio Patuelli, strongly desired, supported, and realized by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna, chaired first by Lanfranco Gualtieri and Ernesto Giuseppe Alfieri and now by Mirella Falconi Mazzotti, the Byron and Risorgimento Museums stand out as an extraordinary centre of international cultural heritage.
Just four months after their inauguration, the Museums have travelled around the world through the most prestigious international media—from The Telegraph to The Times—and have already hosted important national and international institutional visits, such as those of the Vice President of the European Commission Raffaele Fitto and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani. They are now getting ready once again to be at the centre of worldwide attention. An attention that, culturally, Ravenna, as the imperial capital of Rome and Byzantium, has never ceased to deserve.
Ravenna, March 18, 2025
