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Italy on the move. Highways and future

From 6 December to 9 March 2025

MAXXI

Via Guido Reni, 4a, Rome

Opening soon: at 11:00

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One hundred years after the construction of the first Italian motorway, MAXXI tells a century of journeys with Italy in motion. Highways and future, the exhibition opening to the public on December 6, 2024.Curated by Pippo Ciorra with Angela Parente, in collaboration with Autostrade per l’Italia, the exhibition reveals how highways have shaped the landscape, society, and imagination of an entire country. The Italian motorway is not just an infrastructure: it is the thread that weaves modernity and memory, connecting places, people, and stories.With the heroic impulses of the twentieth century, the post-war productive acceleration, the sustainable scenarios of the future, the exhibition is an invitation to rediscover Italy as millions of travelers have experienced it throughout the various epochs. From the "Grand Tour" of the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries, through literature, cinema, and television, our country has been a dream destination for travelers from around the world for centuries. A dream made not only possible, but accessible to everyone thanks to the highways.Among archive projects, photographs by renowned artists, evolving maps, and iconic images, the exhibition guides the visitor along a spectacular space-time itinerary, made up of the history of highways but also of its recurring places and themes. The four sections of the exhibition celebrate the role of the highway as a protagonist of daily life and collective narration.The network is the heart of the centuries-old highway project, whose main objective is to bring people and stories closer together. The process of completing the highway network is illustrated here by documents, photographic and moving images, maps, tourist guides, projects, and drawings found in the rich archives of the Autostrade Society, in the MAXXI Architecture and Contemporary Design collection, and in the archives and studies of numerous contributors.The travel section is a reflection on what is offered to the traveler's gaze, a kind of aesthetic comfort, within the highway route and services. In an increasingly curated and conscious sequence, made up of micro-architectures, rest areas, and refreshment points. From Giovanni Michelucci to Jean Nouvel, passing through Guido Canali and Santiago Calatrava, even architecture by renowned architects is a protagonist of a section of the exhibition. Wineries, bridges, railway stations, company headquarters, productive campuses designed and built by great architecture firms have begun over time and continue to cluster around the highway route, picking up that thread of architectural ambition initiated many years ago. An architecture that is present in people's daily lives, visible to those inside the highway and to those nearby, much more than just a dynamic backdrop.Iwan Baan's photographic visions capture from above, thanks to a series of helicopter surveys, the essence of the highway landscape. Technology and environmental awareness will be the main characteristics of the highways of tomorrow, here told by the concrete green proposals signed by Renzo Piano's studio (RPBW) and by the dreamlike visions of Emiliano Ponzi. Thus, Italy in motion. Highways and future is not only a celebration of ingenuity, but a tribute to travel as a metaphor for life: a bridge between past and future, between distant places and the stories that inhabit them, between the everyday and tomorrow.
Photo of the exhibition setup by Cosimo Trimboli

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	opens - closes	last entry
monday	Closed now
tuesday	11:00 - 19:00
wednesday	11:00 - 19:00
thursday	11:00 - 19:00
friday	11:00 - 19:00
saturday	11:00 - 19:00
sunday	11:00 - 19:00

Italy on the move. Highways and future

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