Three months of travel, 1800 nautical miles, 25 stages and a full calendar of initiatives in each city: from educational workshops for children, to meetings and conferences for adults. All with a single goal: to raise awareness of the importance of the sea in the past and future collective history of Italy and Europe precisely in the 2018, European Year of Cultural Heritage. This is the focus of the Navigating Museum, an initiative promoted by the Association of Maritime Museums of the Mediterranean (AMMM), Mu.MA-Galata of Genoa, the Maritime Museum of Cesenatico and the La Nave di Carta association of La Spezia, leaving today from Cesenatico.
The Navigating Museum, hosted on board the schooner Oloferne, a vintage boat built in the 1944 in Messina, will sail along the peninsula and after the departure from Cesenatico will stop at: Chioggia, Trieste, Pesaro, San Benedetto del Tronto, Martinsicuro / Giulianova, Pescara, Bisceglie, Molfetta, Otranto, Tricase, Gallipoli, Crotone, Syracuse, Pioppi, Naples, Procida, Civitavecchia, Gaeta, Livorno, Viareggio, La Spezia, Chiavari, Genoa, Imperia. The trip will end at the end of March 2018 in Sète, France, at the Festival del Mare, the most important event of Mediterranean seafaring traditions where the schooner Oloferne will be a guest representing the Italian museums.
"Italian maritime history is a very important chapter in the history of the Mediterranean and if we want to face the challenges of today, from immigration to motorways of the sea, from sustainable fishing to new forms of tourism, we must start from the knowledge of our roots " explained Maria Paola Profumo, president of the AMMM and spokesman for the Navigating Museum. "These roots are preserved in the museums of the sea, true links between different cultural worlds: from the maritime to the terrestrial, from that of the boats to that of the communities of the territory. The reality of the museums of the sea and the navy in Italy is very articulated and rich in collections, but a national project is needed that puts them on the net, makes them dialogue with each other and with those of other countries, amplify and enhance their potential ".
The initiative was joined by 70 museums of the sea and the navy of Italy, many of them from the Navy as declared by the frigate captain Leonardo Merlini, to Head of the Naval History Office: "Next to the Navigating Museum the Navy could not be missing, which is already the guardian of much of the multi-millennial tradition and of the naval and national maritime heritage, at the Naval Technical Museum of La Spezia, the Naval History Museum of Venice, the Flagship Memorial at Vittoriano di Roma, the Aragonese Castle and the Maritime Arsenal of Taranto, the Swabian Castle of Brindisi, the Fort San Salvatore of Messina and the Historical Hall Guglielmo Marconi of Ancona". But the 2018 is also the year of the celebrations of the Great War and the Navy has handed over to the commander of the schooner some important files, kept until now inside the archive of the Historical Office of the Navy and drawn up at the end of the 1 ° world conflict, to be taken along the important journey and containing interesting information on the actions carried out by the ships of the Regia Marina during the conflict.
Info: www.museonavigante.it
