“I’m not giving the keys back, we’re staying open.” There is a clash over the Liberation Museum on Via Tasso in Rome between the president of the historic cultural center and the minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. In a post published on the museum’s Facebook page we read that “it will be open regularly” despite being without management since 20 December. The Ministry of Culture did not renew the appointment of the president and the members of the Steering Committee nor did it appoint a senior board of directors. For this reason, the outgoing president, Antonio Parisella, decided not to hand over the keys but to keep open a symbolic place of the capital. An act of resistance “in respect of such a significant essential public service, which cannot be interrupted”.
In the post on social media, Parisella “thanks the operators and collaborators who guarantee the program of school and non-school visits, individual and group, and the use of services for scholars (archive, library, media library and collections)”. Her words quickly went around the web, receiving several certificates of solidarity. Dem parliamentarian Laura Boldrini considers it “serious” that the Museum is without a board of directors «because Minister Sangiuliano did not make the appointment and did not consider it an urgent matter, worthy of his time and attention. A place that is a symbol of Nazi-fascist barbarism and has become a testimony to the capital’s liberation struggle deserves maximum attention, care and protection.”
The group leader of the Green and Left Alliance in the Constitutional Affairs Commission of Montecitorio, Filiberto Zaratti, announced the presentation of a question to the minister so that he “finds a solution immediately”. The mayor of Parma, Michele Guerra, underlines that «if today the Museum in via Tasso is not closed, if it is continuing to carry out its essential role as a public service, as a space where history, memory and testimony meet for the benefit of its visitors , it is due to its outgoing president, who has assumed a personal responsibility of high civil value. This president is Antonio Parisella, an unforgettable and unforgettable professor of contemporary history at the University of Parma, a true and important Parma native by adoption.” For the regional councilor of Azione Alessio d’Amato Parisella «he did well to keep the historical museum open to citizens without interruptions, despite his assignment having expired. The Ministry of Culture would do well to quickly make its decisions regarding the summits.” The controversy comes on the day of Sangiuliano’s request to place a commemorative plaque in memory of Antonio Gramsci in the place where he died in 1937, the Quisisana clinic in Rome.