The National Resistance Museum is born, it will be based in Milan

MILAN - The National Resistance Museum will be based in Milan and for this project the government, with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, will allocate another 15 million euros, after the 2.5 million already allocated in the past, for a total of 7.5 million euros. The announcement was made by the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Dario Franceschini, together with the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, during a meeting with the press at Palazzo Marino, the Municipality's headquarters.
The first appreciation for the project came from the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who in a message read by the minister commented: "the memory of those who fought to restore freedom to Italy must be preserved and transmitted, not to reproduce divisions, but to consolidate and spread, especially among the younger generations, the awareness of the inestimable value of democracy and freedom ".
The National Resistance Museum will have its headquarters, of 2,500 square meters, in Piazzale Baiamonti in the second pyramid designed - and still to be built - by the architect Jacques Herzog in front of the first pyramid, the one where the Feltrinelli Foundation is located. For Franceschini the country "absolutely needs" this museum because in Italy there are "many important places that recall the Resistance but there is no national museum. In a moment like this it is right that there is a strong signal". The announcement by the minister and by Sala closed the controversy over the headquarters of the Museum of the Resistance, which at first had to be built in the Casa della Memoria in Milan, a place considered too small for a project of this importance, given that the capital is a city gold medal of the Resistance.
For this reason Anpi, together with other associations, had sent a letter to the ministry in recent months, with the life senator Liliana Segre as the first signatory, to request that a suitable site be found for the museum. "This museum will be a prestigious project for Milan and important for the country - said the mayor Giuseppe Sala -. We thank the government for this intervention. Faced with the prestige of this museum no one will pull back, the funds will be enough to build" the structure "and the contents of the museum. It is a question, however, of finding the formulas to speed up and proceed quickly". The project will be attended by the Parri Institute, the Anpi and probably also the Lombardy Region, with which dialogue has already begun: there will be an ad hoc Foundation.
"I am the son of a white partisan and I have always carried with me the fear that that memory gets lost. - Franceschini concluded- It is therefore important to have a place that will remind young people of what our fathers did, sacrificing all their youth for freedom and democracy ".