De-activating Contested Layers of Memory in Historic Museum Buildings: Ongoing Experiences at Museo delle Civiltà in Rome

The paper explores the complex field revolving around the relationship between museums and heritage buildings embodying or stemming from contested histories, which often convey a layer of meaning that may be dissonant with the effort that these cultural agents are doing to become “democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures”. Through the investigation of the ongoing work that is being carried out around this theme at Museo delle Civiltà (housed in Palazzo delle Scienze and Palazzo delle Tradizioni Popolari, a monumental complex built during the 1942 World Fair, a renown architectural symbol of the Fascist Regime and its colonial stances), the contribution aims to exemplify different strategies enabling the re-appropriation, re-use and subversion of dissonant architecture, variously tackling the contested memory narrated by spaces and structures through multi-disciplinary actions merging museographic, architectural and artistic interventions.