"Un nuovo e degno Museo archeologico sta sorgendo a Sabratha..." Dal Museo archeologico di Tripoli ai Musei di Leptis Magna e di Sabratha.

“A new and worthy Archaeological Museum is rising at Sabratha…”. From the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli to the museums of Lepcis Magna and Sabratha The publication of the dossier of project drawings realized by Diego Vincifori for the Sabratha Museum provides an opportunity to review the various stages in the establishment of museums in the main localities of Tripolitania: the Archaeological Museum at Tripoli, and the two site museums at Lepcis Magna and Sabratha. The creation of the former is analyzed; the events leading up to it are reviewed: from the formation of the original collection to the establishment of the Archaeological Museum (1919) within a Turkish military building adjacent to the Castle; the subsequent transfer of the collection, suitably augmented, to the restored rooms of the Bastion of St. George inside the Castle, during the governorship of Pietro Badoglio (1930); the later reconversion of these same rooms into offices and reception rooms for the new governor, Italo Balbo and his closest aides (1934), culminating in the ambitious project designed inside the Castle by Balbo’s ‘court architect’, Florestano Di Fausto, completed and fitted out only after the end of the war and enriched by many artefacts removed from the Museum of Lepcis Magna. The history of the colony’s museum policy is also the history of unrealized projects: at least until 1926 the Superintendency of Monuments and Excavations cherished the hope that the Government would make provision for the erection of a new museum on the site where once the Forte del Faro had stood. Another pipe-dream was that of Angelo Piccioli, head of the division at Italy’s Ministry of National Education, in 1930: he wanted to transform the whole Castle into a great ‘Historical Museum’ of Libya. Discussion of the Museum at Lepcis Magna focuses, in turn, on the formation of the collection, the construction of the building begun in 1926, at the time when Renato Bartoccini was Superintendent, and especially its fitting out as an archaeological museum. The attribution of the exhibition project, conceived by the then Superintendent Giacomo Guidi, to the architect Diego Vincifori has been confirmed by the rediscovery of two building plans, preserved in the Historical Archive of the Department of Archaeology, Tripoli. The project can be reconstructed in detail thanks to the description that Guidi himself gave of it to the local press. The transfer to Nazi Germany of what was considered at the time the most prestigious work in the collection, the Venus of Capitoline type, donated by Mussolini to Feldmarschall Goering (1938), marked the onset of the spoliation of the collection of Lepcis Magna, though this was only instigated in any wholesale fashion at the time of the post-war installation of the Museum in Tripoli. Ample coverage is also devoted to the inauguration of the Museum in Lepcis (5 March 1931), concurrently with the opening of the Albergo Agli Scavi di Leptis Magna, designed by one of the protagonists of the Modernist style of colonial architecture, Carlo Enrico Rava. Lastly, the change in plan of the design of the Sabratha Museum, built from 1932 onwards, is discussed: the ‘academic’ project designed by Vincifori was ditched in favour of a more ‘rational’ and ‘functional’ building, harmoniously integrated into the landscape, and more in tune with the ‘modern’ conception that Giacomo Guidi had of the museum structure. According to Guidi, form and function ought to complement each other; they ought to be mutually integrated: a consonance between idea and project that once again confirmed the close association between the Superintendent of Antiquities and his architect.