CRI: L'Idea Dentro il Museo

It's great fun to discover history through the medium of tourism!

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The route is part of a network joining eleven locations in Castiglione delle Stiviere which were transformed into 12 hospitals during the second war of Italian independence. The hospitals became the refuge for over 10,000 soldiers injured in the Battle of Solferino and San Martino in the days following the bloody battle on the 24 June 1859. A milestone in the unification of Italy


We invite you to walk for a little over an hour through the centre of this beautiful town situated, as it is, in the rolling hills in the north of the Province of Mantova. Just south of Lake Garda.


Here are preserved a record of the support provided by the local population. In particular the women who acted as nurses in the churches, police station, convents, private houses, streets and gardens bringing humanitarian assistance to every one of the soldiers wounded on the battlefield. Assisting, as they did, soldiers from Piedmont, France, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and north Africa without discriminating on the basis of race, nationality or religion. Exactly the same actions that were present at the foundation of the International Red Cross Movement.


This idea comes from the workshop "I love Museums" in the Study Course for Tourism prepared in collaboration with the Study Course for Languages by the Francesco Gonzaga College in Castiglione delle Stivirere (year 2013/2014 and later) and the Museums System for the Province of Mantova. The words were written and the photographs taken by the students who worked on the analysis of the historical archives together with the assistance of their tutors.