The Italian state is converting a notorious 18th-century prison into a new cultural center in Tuscany

2022-02-02T13:04:00-05:00

The Italian state is spending €70 million ($86 million) to rehabilitate structural remains at Santo Stefano and neighboring coastal sites. At the former, the government is building an open-air museum that will illustrate the site’s dark past, along with gardens and conference rooms that will be used for seminars and events focused on cultural and political themes.

The cultural center will be located inside the site of a former 18th-century prison originally constructed under the reign of King Ferdinand IV in a now aging village called Santo Stefano. The project is being overseen by the state’s cultural minister Dario Franceschini and mirrors efforts in America and Georgia to convert sites with less-than-humanistic original purposes into centers of art and culture that make education about the uses (and abuses) of the sites a part of their public program. The Romanesque panopticon was built to allow for constant monitoring of its inmates known for housing anti-fascists who were exiled there during the Mussolini era.

Another government official told The Art Newspaper that part of the new cultural center will include a "School of High Thoughts, that welcomes all the best training experiences on human rights, the dignity of the person, and justice.” The project is being named after progressive former European Parliament president David Sassoli, ...

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That the Antinori family embraced a more ambitious project, allowed Archea to design everything down to the furniture and fittings, then paid the bills after the budget more than doubled from its original $45 million, and also endured years of delays because of construction problems, shows how much fine, successful architecture depends on the right client.

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The Italian state is converting a notorious 18th-century prison into a new cultural center in Tuscany

Vines and Vintner Beautify a Tuscan Hill