An encrypted code, a small manuscript in light paper, with numbers and strange symbols, forming an incomprehensible text, belonging to the Risorgimento collection of the Civic Museum of Modena.
And its author, the Modenese poet and patriot Pietro Celestino Giannone, exiled for many years between Paris and London.
These are the two elements which, for almost 150 years in which the code remained inviolate despite repeated attempts to decipher it, fueled the idea that historical information relating to the Carboneria was hidden behind the cipher text.
Instead, when Paolo Bonavoglia, a mathematics teacher, found the key to the code in 2014, the manuscript revealed not secret stories of Carboneria, but a highly licentious erotic-libertine poem.
The revealed manuscript is the protagonist of the exhibition 'Enigmaproibito.
Secrets and eroticism in the encrypted poem by Pietro Giannone', set up in the renovated rooms of the Civic Museum, which opens on Saturday 10 February at 5pm and which will be open to visitors until 23 June.
The exhibition - promoted by the Civic Museum and FestivalFilosofia - offers two parallel levels of enjoyment: one for adults and one for children, in an interactive dimension which, with videos and multimedia stations, invites visitors to get involved by experimenting with the encrypted language after having understood it. the secrets.
The public 'over 16' will be able to access a secret room to read the verses of the poem, while the little ones will have a room reserved for them.
The encrypted code invented by Giannone, probably to divert any suspicions of friends and family about the true meaning of the verses he was writing, is a way of secretly playing with transgressive and obscene words masked by a code that returned the hidden value of the word as an impenetrable secret except to him " lay initiates.
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