Sea and seafaring are a cultural heritage to be promoted. With this purpose, in the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the Sailing Museum (Museo Navigante) departed on 9 January from Cesenatico; the initiative is promoted by the Association of Mediterranean Sea Museums (Associazione Musei Marittimi del Mediterraneo, AMMM), Genoa’s Mu.MA-Galata, Cesenatico’s Seafaring Museum (Museo della Marineria) and La Spezia’s “La Nave di Carta”. 70 sea and seafaring museums in Italy have taken part in the initiative, organised under the aegis of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism and in agreement with the Navy and the Coast Guard. The Sailing Museum is set up on board the Oloferne, a vintage barquentine built in 1944 in Messina, and will sail along Italy’s coast: after its departure from Cesenatico, it will stop in Chioggia, Trieste, Pesaro, San Benedetto del Tronto, Martinsicuro/Giulianova, Pescara, Bisceglie, Molfetta, Otranto, Tricase, Gallipoli, Crotone, Siracusa, Pioppi, Napoli, Procida, Civitavecchia, Gaeta, Livorno, Viareggio, La Spezia, Chiavari, Genova, Imperia.
“This initiative is in line with - and in a way foreruns - the reform of the museum system, one of whose strengths is networking among museums, and between museum and territory” says Manuele Roberto Guido, in charge of museum management and promotion at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.
The journey of the Sailing Museum (which will be in La Spezia- Lerici Golfo dei Poeti - Cinqueterre on 10 and 11 March) will finish at the end of March 2018 in Sète, France, at the Sea Festival “Escale à Sète”, the most important event on Mediterranean seafaring traditions, where the barquentine Oloferne will represent Italian museums.
Three months on the sea, 1800 sea miles, 25 stops, and a calendar of many events in each town: learning workshops for kids, meetings and conferences for the adults. With a single purpose: promoting knowledge of how important the sea is in Italy’s and Europe’s past and future history.
“Italian maritime history is a fundamental chapter in the history of Mediterranean, and if we want to face today’s challenges - migrations, Motorways of the Sea, sustainable fishing, new forms of tourism - we need to learn from our roots” explains Maria Paola Profumo, president of AMMM and Sailing Museum spokesperson. “These roots are conserved in sea museums, which are veritable joining links between different cultural worlds: between land and sea, between ships and local communities. We can do more and better to make these “cultural ports” known. Sea and seafaring museums in Italy are numerous and host many collections, but we need a national project to network them, to make them dialogue with one another and with museums in other countries, to enhance and promote their potential”.
In 2017, around 650,000 people visited the 70 museums belonging to the Sailing Museum network, which has also started to take a census of the sector. Three types of museums have been included in the census: historical-naval museums, ethnographic museums, and museums of marine biology. The survey also includes the sections of national archaeologic museums preserving important findings of ancient seafaring history, and the small seafaring culture hubs formed around private collections open to visitors. The Sailing Museum subscribed the Charter of the Sea in 2017.
The activity of the various museums, and the history of the collections they host, can be found online at www.museonavigante.it, a constantly update portal of Italian seafaring culture. The journey of the Sailing Museum can be followed online on the website blog, on Facebook, Twitter @museonavigante and on the youtube channel “Museo Navigante".
Info: press@museonavigante.it - mobile 335 7350293
