In less than three months 620 thousand visitors entered the Italian Pavilion of Expo Dubai 2020. The figure was provided by Commissioner Paolo Glisenti. «We are satisfied – said Glisenti -: the Italian Pavilion has become a reference and listening point at an international level, with its 500 events that will be held in these six months. Furthermore, let’s not forget that we have to add 6 million virtual visitors to visitors in attendance ».
According to estimates, it is among the top 5 pavilions for visits, out of 192 on the site. But the success of the Italian Pavilion is not only in the numbers, but also in the recognition that comes from the Emirati organizers. The facility could therefore remain in Dubai beyond the expiry of the exposure, scheduled for the end of March. The authorities of the Arab country have in fact sent a formal request to our government to be able to keep the pavilion intact at the end of the Expo and, in the ongoing dialogue with Rome, two exhibition projects for the future are being discussed.
The first, based on the idea of a high-level training center for the recovery and restoration of works of art or archaeological assets damaged in war zones or after natural disasters. With the hypothesis of being able to reproduce them digitally when physical recovery was not possible, with the same techniques used for Michelangelo’s David which was digitized and printed and then finished with marble dust by the craftsmen of the semi-precious stone factory in Florence, becoming an important attraction of the event with the claim “Beauty unites people”.
The second project concerns the construction of an Arab-Mediterranean campus for students: training is in fact one of the main points of Italian participation in Expo, as evidenced by the 70 Italian university students who guide visitors to the pavilion.