On 10 June 1924, Giacomo Matteotti, young socialist deputy from Rovigo, was brutally murdered by 5 fascist squadristi. The most courageous opponent of the fascist regime was shot to death, the man who had had the courage and moral rectitude to condemn the electoral fraud carried out by the dictatorship and the corruption present in the government presided over by Benito Mussolini.
In Rovigo, a Provincial Committee was set up for the celebrations, chaired by the Mayor of Fratta Polesine, Matteotti's birthplace
The Committee was actively supported by the Veneto Region , Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundation. The latter took on the burden of the outfit makeover of Matteotti House Museum in Fratta Polesine and the financing of a commemorative exhibition planned in Palazzo Roncale, in Rovigo. In anticipation of the Centenary, the activity of the Provincial Committee began two years ago, with a rich program of meetings and initiatives aimed at the entire population, others at young people, others at specialized audiences, conducted in a widespread manner throughout the Polesine area but not only.
In recent years the Committee has promoted intense scientific activity with the Universities of Ferrara and Padua
A new house museum on the centenary
For the centenary, in Rovigo the figure of Matteotti will be remembered by an original exhibition curated by Professor Stefano Caretti, one of the greatest scholars of Matteotti and the history of socialism, professor of contemporary history at the University of Siena. The exhibition will be in Palazzo Roncale, in Rovigo, from 5 April to 7 July 2024. Promoting it are the Provincial Committee for the Centenary of Matteotti, the Veneto Region, with the support of the Cariparo Foundation, the collaboration of the Veneto Regional Museums Directorate of the Ministry of Culture and the patronage of the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Centenary of Giacomo's death Matteotti, of the “Filippo Turati” Historical Studies Foundation of Florence and of the Giacomo Matteotti Foundation of Rome. Through a journey of images and documents, the exhibition on Matteotti intends to simultaneously offer information and training to the wider public and especially to young people. The space of the new House Museum will be a place for reflection on the images of a country in one of the most critical moments of its history and for the critical and powerful reading of the central figure of Giacomo Matteotti for the contemporary Italian history.
The House Museum includes a route that begins on the ground floor, from the everyday rooms: the kitchen, the dining room, the study-library. Alongside the simple home furniture, the new exhibition project will develop in these environments the story of the Polesine that Matteotti knew as a boy. On the first floor, with the bedrooms, the family library, the piano and the space dedicated to music, the bonds and passions of a cultured family will relive, capable of weaving important relationships, even from this corner of Polesine, even in virtue of illustrious relationships such as that with the baritone Titta Ruffo, Matteotti's brother-in-law. The evocative power of private testimonies, once ascended to the second floor, will make room for the images and voices of Matteotti's public story and the anti-fascist legacy in the present time, his great moral and political legacy.
Ideally the route extends beyond the perimeter of the House Museum, into the small village of Fratta Polesine. Three historic villas are reflected in the river that laps the garden of Casa Matteotti: Villa Badoer, a sixteenth-century masterpiece by Palladio, Villa Avezzù, an elegant Venetian residence, and Villa dei Carbonari, where one of the first nuclei of the Italian Carboneria. A history that spans millennia, as evidenced by the Necropolis of Frattesina, the largest in Europe, and by the finds preserved in the National Archaeological Museum, housed in one of the barchesse of Villa Badoer.
