MantovaRisorgimentopresents the events, places, and people of nineteenth-century Mantua.
MantovaRisorgimento is a digital space that guides the public in discovering the Risorgimento in Mantua. Through multimedia content and interactive tools, the website offers an engaging narrative of events, figures, and curiosities connected to the Mantuan Risorgimento. Created to make part of the Museo del Risorgimento di Mantova’s museum and documentary heritage accessible online, the project has grown into a true observatory from which to explore one of the most significant chapters in the city’s history and its connections with Europe and the wider world.
The three thematic itineraries explore three key aspects of the Mantuan Risorgimento. Texts, archival images, videos, and animations guide visitors on a journey to discover how the “Age of Revolutions” helped shape the contemporary world. The Risorgimento also passed through Mantua, leaving traces that are still clearly visible in our present.
A multimedia guide and an interactive map invite visitors to discover the places of the Risorgimento in Mantua. By clicking on the map’s points, users can listen to audio content that brings to life stories, events, and testimonies connected to squares, streets, monuments, and historic sites. An itinerary that gives voice once again to the places and people who helped shape the Mantuan Risorgimento.
Credits
Founded by the Regional Programme under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) 2021–2027 – Lombardy Region. The project is promoted and developed by Dotdotdot and the Municipality of Mantua, in collaboration with the Istituto Mantovano di Storia Contemporanea. Scientific Committee
Enrico Francia – University of Padua He is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Padua. A scholar of the Italian Risorgimento, in recent years his research has focused in particular on the relationship between material culture and politics. On this topic, he published Oggetti risorgimentali. Una storia materiale della politica nel primo Ottocento (Carocci, Rome, 2021) and, together with Carlotta Sorba, co-edited Political Objects in the Age of Revolutions: Material Culture, National Identities, Political Practices (Viella, Rome, 2021).
Gian Luca Fruci – University of Pisa He teaches the history of the Age of Revolutions at the University of Pisa. His research focuses on the visual and material culture of voting and on the spectacularization of politics in the long European nineteenth century. Among his recent publications are Il pugno di Manin: un’immagine transmediale dal 1848 europeo all’Italia di fine secolo (Memoria e Ricerca, no. 3, 2025) and Entre Marianne y la Pepa: la Constituyente italiana en la cultura visual del largo 48, in Pedro Rújula (ed.), La dimensión popular de la política en los orígenes del mundo contemporáneo (Publications of the University of Valencia, Valencia, 2025).
Alessio Petrizzo – University of Padua He is a researcher at the University of Padua. A specialist in the political and cultural history of the long nineteenth century, his approach weaves together visual studies, material culture, the history of knowledge (particularly criminological knowledge), the history of the body, and popular cultures. He is the author of Parole di brigante. Scrivere di sé in un carcere dell’Italia unita (Viella, Rome 2025).
Carlotta Sorba – University of Padua, European University Institute, Florence She teaches Contemporary History at the University of Padua and at the European University Institute in Florence. A scholar of nineteenth-century Italian and European history, she has worked on different areas of cultural production (music, theatre, literature) in relation to the society and politics of the time. On nineteenth-century Italy, she authored Teatri. L’Italia del melodramma nell’età del Risorgimento (il Mulino, Bologna 2001) and Il melodramma della nazione. Politica e sentimenti nell’Italia del Risorgimento (Laterza, Rome–Bari 2015).
Technical and operational coordination Marco Carlo Belfanti – Istituto Mantovano di Storia Contemporanea Roberta Piccinelli – Comune di Mantova, conservatore Musei Civici Claudia Bonora Previdi – Istituto Mantovano di Storia Contemporanea Paola Somenzi – Comune di Mantova, Archivio Storico Comunale Administrative coordination Mariangela Busi – Comune di Mantova, Ufficio UNESCO Francesca Ferrari – Comune di Mantova – direttore Biblioteche Civiche Veronica Ghizzi – Comune di Mantova, direttore Musei Civici Giulia Pecchini – Comune di Mantova, dirigente Settore Cultura e Turismo Art direction, graphic design and development Dotdotdot Itineraries texts Enrico Francia, Gian Luca Fruci, Alessio Petrizzo, Carlotta Sorba Multimedia guide texts Claudia Bonora Previdi, Giorgia Giusti, Roberta Piccinelli Photographs Giuseppe Gradella (Municipality of Mantua) Acknowledgements We thank Costanza Bertolotti and Antonella Cancellara for their collaboration. We also wish to remember Daniela Ferrari, who supported the initial phase of the project.
