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Esposizione Internazionale di Roma 1911

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Esposizione Internazionale di Roma 1911

In 1911 Rome was the second of three cities celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Kingdom of Italy. Under the 1908 agreement between the mayors of Turin and Rome, Turin took industry and labor while Rome took the historical, archaeological and artistic side. The jubilee opened on 27 March 1911, the anniversary of Cavour’s speech naming Rome the destined capital, when the King addressed the nation from the Campidoglio. An executive committee chaired by Count Enrico di San Martino Valperga organized the program, largely with State funding. Catholic circles opposed the celebrations, viewing Mayor Ernesto Nathan’s administration as anticlerical; Civiltà Cattolica called 1911 a “year of mourning.”

Unlike Turin’s single fairground, Rome spread five official exhibitions across the city:

  • Fine arts, Valle Giulia. Cesare Bazzani’s Palazzo delle Belle Arti was surrounded by eleven national pavilions, among them Edwin Lutyens’s British pavilion and Josef Hoffmann’s Austrian pavilion with its Klimt room.
  • Regional and ethnographic exhibitions, Piazza d’Armi. Opened 21 April after strike delays, with Marcello Piacentini’s monumental buildings, fourteen regional pavilions around a lake, and Lamberto Loria’s ethnographic village.
  • Archaeology, Baths of Diocletian. Rodolfo Lanciani’s survey of the Roman provinces through casts and models, including the Ankara temple and Paul Bigot’s model of ancient Rome.
  • Retrospective exhibitions, Castel Sant’Angelo.
  • Risorgimento exhibition, Vittoriano, in the national monument inaugurated on 4 June.

A dissident Mostra dell’Agro Romano, led by Giovanni Cena, Sibilla Aleramo and Duilio Cambellotti, documented the poverty of the Roman Campagna.

Receipts were disappointing, a result attributed to poor summer weather and the 1911 cholera outbreak. No reliable attendance figure has been located; the figures often given online are Turin’s, copied in error. The exposition’s lasting legacy was institutional and urban:

  • The Palazzo delle Belle Arti became the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, and the British pavilion the British School at Rome.
  • Loria’s collection founded the Museo delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari, and Lanciani’s material eventually formed the Museo della Civiltà Romana.
  • The Baths of Diocletian became the main seat of the Museo Nazionale Romano.
  • The Piazza d’Armi site became the Della Vittoria quarter.

Incubator Exhibit

It is known from a typical Alexandre Lion souvenir postcard that he had an incubator exhibit at the Rome Exposition of 1911 as well as the Turin Exposition. Unfortunately a thorough search of contemporary sources has not turned up any mention of the incubator exhibit at the Rome exposition.

Sources

  • Renard, Thomas. “L’Italie à l’exposition de 1911 et le partage de la capitalité.” Preprint, 2018. HAL hal-01859410. https://univ-rennes.hal.science/hal-01859410/document. Retrieved 12 Oct 2026.
  • Pasqualini, Maria Pia. “Del Museo della Civiltà Romana.” Mediterraneo antico 9, no. 2 (2006). https://art.torvergata.it/bitstream/2108/27173/1/MCR.Pasqualini.pdf. Retrieved 13 Oct 2026.
  • “Inaugurazione della Mostra Etnografica Regionale a Piazza d’Armi: 1911,” from L’Illustrazione Italiana, 23 Apr 1911. Transcribed at https://www.info.roma.it/roma_sparita_dettaglio.asp?ID_stampa=9539. Retrieved 13 Oct 2026. (Secondary-site transcription.)
  • Le Esposizioni di Roma e di Torino nel 1911 descritte ed illustrate (Milan: Sonzogno), no. 10, March 1911. https://digit.biblio.polito.it/4114/1/rivista191103n10.pdf. Retrieved 12 Oct 2026.
  • Piggott, Jan. “The International Fine Arts Exhibition in Rome, 1911.” Charles Ricketts & Charles Shannon blog, no. 492, 30 Dec 2020. https://charlesricketts.blogspot.com/2020/12/492-international-fine-arts-exhibition.html. Retrieved 13 Oct 2026. (Its attendance and date figures are Turin’s.)
  • Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione. Cartoline d’Italia: Torino, Firenze, Roma 1911. https://iccd.cultura.gov.it/getFile.php?id=1342. Retrieved 13 Oct 2026.
  • Museo della Civiltà Romana. “The Archaeological Exhibition of 1911.” https://museociviltaromana.it/en/node/4361. Retrieved 13 Oct 2026.
  • “International Exhibition of Art (1911).” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Exhibition_of_Art_(1911). Retrieved 13 Oct 2026. (Infobox figures are Turin’s, copied in error.)
More Information about Alexandre Lion

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Last Updated on 10/13/26