Name:Piccolo Museo del diario

About:The Piccolo Museo del Diario (Little Museum of Diaries) is an intense multisensory and interactive journey born to describe the National Archive of Diaries of Pieve Santo Stefano and its precious autobiographical stories. The setting engages the visitors in an innovative way and takes them by the hand through the writings of common people who tell the story of Italy from a truly unknown point of view. Private memories become collective and universal stories, thus joining the major historical narrative and intertwining with it, so to speak, with “history written from below”. Here, our country finds its purest identity. Memories, letters and diaries bypass the filter of rhetoric, and make us understand the world we live in – our society.

Address:Palazzo pretorio, Piazza PlinioPellegrini, 1

Municipality:Pieve Santo Stefano

Province/Département:Arezzo

Region:Toscana

Postal Code:52036

Country:Italy

Telephone: (0039) 0575.797734 / (0039) 379.1001297

Email:piccolomuseo@archiviodiari.it

Web:https://www.piccolomuseodeldiario.it/

History:or years, while entering Pieve Santo Stefano, a yellow sign with the words “City of the Diary” has attracted and intrigued visitors. They crossed the threshold of the Porta Pretorio Palace and climbed up the “sixteen steps”, expecting to access a regular museum: instead, they found themselves in front of a row of red and green folders, with texts divided both by years of admission and alphabetical order. Some real treasures were hidden from sight: treasures like Clelia Marchi’s bed sheet, which used to be folded into a case and exhibited only once a year, on the three days of the Pieve Prize, until 2013.For years, staff and collaborators of the Archive have pulled out the diaries from their files and told stories related to them. Stories sometimes related to the text and sometimes to the way it took to get to Pieve. Once the Bed Sheet started to be exhibited, we found natural to give room to other manuscripts and other autobiographical stories, too. That’s how we started to share and tell stories, that’s what we still do in the museum rooms. When actor, director and playwright Mario Perrotta entered the Archive for the first time, he imagined that the alphabetical order imposed on the diaries might create some rather odd combinations: a partisan would stand close to a fascist, a nun next to a prostitute. Back at that time, the Archive was looking for someone ableThe book of Perrotta was the main source of inspiration for dotdotdot in the making of the Piccolo Museo del Diario. The visitor will find many correspondences with the narration, starting from the idea of the diaries leaving their shelf at night, flying away in search of similar stories, then creating that “rustle of others” that gave rise to the first installation of the museum. The very figure of Saverio Tutino has a special place through the pages of “Il paese dei diari”, since he used to have a special place in the town of Pieve S. Stefano, too. As Perrotta writes, «it was not Saverio who chose Pieve, but Pieve that chose Saverio». The book of Perrotta was the main source of inspiration for dotdotdot in the making of the Piccolo Museo del Diario. The visitor will find many correspondences with the narration, starting from the idea of the diaries leaving their shelf at night, flying away in search of similar stories, then creating that “rustle of others” that gave rise to the first installation of the museum. The very figure of Saverio Tutino has a special place through the pages of “Il paese dei diari”, since he used to have a special place in the town of Pieve S. Stefano, too. As Perrotta writes, «it was not Saverio who chose Pieve, but Pieve that chose Saverio».The book of Perrotta was the main source of inspiration for dotdotdot in the making of the Piccolo Museo del Diario. The visitor will find many correspondences with the narration, starting from the idea of the diaries leaving their shelf at night, flying away in search of similar stories, then creating that “rustle of others” that gave rise to the first installation of the museum. The very figure of Saverio Tutino has a special place through the pages of “Il paese dei diari”, since he used to have a special place in the town of Pieve S. Stefano, too. As Perrotta writes, «it was not Saverio who chose Pieve, but Pieve that chose Saverio». to draw up a book celebrating the first 25 years of its life. It was July 2007 and Il paese dei diari (The town of diaries) was edited by Terre di Mezzo in September 2009.

Fixed Activities:The book of Perrotta was the main source of inspiration for dotdotdot in the making of the Piccolo Museo del Diario. The visitor will find many correspondences with the narration, starting from the idea of the diaries leaving their shelf at night, flying away in search of similar stories, then creating that “rustle of others” that gave rise to the first installation of the museum. The very figure of Saverio Tutino has a special place through the pages of “Il paese dei diari”, since he used to have a special place in the town of Pieve S. Stefano, too. As Perrotta writes, «it was not Saverio who chose Pieve, but Pieve that chose Saverio».

Photos:https://www.piccolomuseodeldiario.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/©LB-piccolomuseodiario-056.jpg

Others:The speaking voices entering the museum, unexpectedly addressing the visitor, represent what Saverio Tutino, founder of the National Archive of Diaries, liked to call the “rustle of others”. The very same stories that he began collecting back in 1984, have become the walls of the Piccolo Museo del Diario which is dedicated to his memory. The rustle surrounds us, and leads us into the rooms of memory, transforming our visit into a unique experience of sounds, voices, light and words flying through the air. Step by step, the visitor is increasingly immersed in an intimate journey and an introspective dialogue with himself and his own past. Entering today the Piccolo Museo del Diario is like crossing a piece of history into Italy. Ideally, the visitor opens all the shelves of the Archive of diaries, discarding files, leafing through old letters, browsing diaries and listening to some of the over 8000 stories stored in it. Actors and performers such as Donatella Allegro, Andrea Biagiotti, Grazia Cappelletti, Simone Cristicchi, Diego Dalla Casa, Marco Paolini, Mario Perrotta, Paola Roscioli, Maya Sansa and Massimo Somaglino have given their voices to these stories. The Piccolo Museo del Diario was designed by dotdotdot, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Milan which has installed and programmed several electronic devices within the museum, harmonising technologies of audio and video elements, sensors, microcontrollers, lights, projectors and computers. The project was inspired by Mario Perrotta’s book, Il paese dei diari (Terre di mezzo Editore, 2009). The Piccolo Museo del Diario is the natural evolution of the “Impronte digitali” project. Since March 2016, the Piccolo Museo del Diario has joined the Valtiberina Tuscany museum network. Since October 2016, the Piccolo Museo del Diario is an official member of the National Museum of Small Artists.