Seventeen museums and archaeological areas across Italy will have free access to people who hold a ticket of Milan Expo throughout the duration of the world’s fair. The Expo 2015 card will also allow a free tour of so-called “Italian jewels” selected by the ministry.
The museums picked by the Italian culture ministry are: Castello Ducale di Agliè, near Turin, which has also an extensive park with Italian and English landscape gardens; the National Museum of Prehistory and Protohistory (MUPRE) in Capo di Ponte near Brescia; Genoa’s National Gallery at Palazzo Spinola, which still has its original furniture with paintings by Antonello da Messina, Orazio Gentileschi, Luca Giordano, Grechetto, Guido Reni, Rubens, and Anton van Dyck.
Other places include Venice’s National Museum at Palazzo Grimani and the National Archeological Museum of Cividale del Friuli, in Udine province. Expo visitors will also be granted free access to the Farnese theater in Parma, which was almost entirely destroyed by bombs in 1944 and subsequently rebuilt to recreate its extraordinary 17th-century architecture.
The list includes the National Museum of San Matteo in Pisa and the National Museum of the Spoleto Duchy inside the Rocca Albornoziana fortress; the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche in Ancona, and the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, which houses an extensive collection from southern Etruria.
Expo visitors will have free access to Chieti’s National Archaeological Museum of Abruzzo, the Altilia-Sepino archeological area in Campobasso province, and the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples – one of southern Italy’s most prized ‘jewels’.
Other prized sites opening their doors for free to Expo visitors will be Taranto’s National Archaeological Museum Taranto (MARTA); the Basilicata Archaeological Museum in Potenza, and Cagliari’s Archaeological Museum of Sibari and National Pinacoteca, both in Sardinia.
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