The project was born of a desire by Fondazione Luigi Rovati to create a museum within the historic 19thcentury Bocconi-Rizzoli-Carraro Palace for displaying an important collection of Etruscan artifacts. A non-conventional architecture was developed in which references to the Etruscan tombs of Cerveteri evoke that civilization’s lively relationship with the world beyond death. Hypogeum-inspired spaces were inserted under the palace and extended beneath the garden, including three domed rooms that create an atmosphere of mysticism and suspense.

The below-ground space is accessed from the main entrance, where a staircase carved in pietra forte Fiorentina, a material extracted from quarries in Tuscany and Emilia, leads to the exhibition space, consisting of three circular rooms and a large elliptical room. This space, which is in semi-darkness, is enveloped by 30,000 stone segments, each one individually designed and skillfully built and assembled so that they continuously envelop the entire space: a formal continuity that gives it a sense of unity and fluidity. Because of the size of each segment, which is 5 cm thick, 1 m long, and is distanced 5 mm from its neighbor, the horizontal stripes of the stones give this imposing mass an effect of suspension that contrasts with the reflective specks from Mica flakes in the stone. They create a multitude of small points of light in the shadows and the solid mass.

The itinerary is given a chiaroscuro effect by large slabs of bright Pietra Serena sandstone, while constellations of vases seem to float in mid-air, supported by suspended planes that are almost invisible within large transparent display cases. Upon leaving this evocative museum space, visitors emerge into the 19th-century architecture of the palace, the renovation of which includes the creation of a “newfound home” designed specifically for preserving the rest of the foundation’s ancient art collection.

The upper floors of the building contain spaces connected with the museum operations, including a library, a conference room, temporary exhibition rooms, and a restaurant at the top floor. A large entry hall welcomes visitors at the ground floor, where there is also a bookstore that links the bistro with the courtyard garden. The project was founded on the idea of creating a museum that would be open to the city. In the project for the exhibition design, as with all the architecture of the building, the elements were studied and designed in detail so that they became an integral part of the narration but also in order to generate an immersive experience of the objects on display through a mix of history, archaeology, design, architecture, and digital technologies.

The exhibition itinerary is not rigidly defined, exploring beneath the three domes where the artifacts are displayed in large glass cases that symbolize the fragments of history, or go into the ellipsoidal space, or discover new narratives in some of the other rooms.