L’Automobile è femmina Museum
Mio caro Senatore, in questo momento ritorno dal campo di Desenzano con la Sua macchina che mi sembra risolvere la questione del sesso già dibattuta. L’Automobile è femmina. Questa ha la grazia, la snellezza, la vivacità d’una seduttrice; ha, inoltre, una virtù ignota alle donne: la perfetta obbedienza. Ma, per conto, delle donne ha la disinvolta levità nel superare ogni scabrezza. Inclinata pregreditur.
[lettera al Senatore Giovanni Agnelli]
To seal and commemorate d’Annunzio’s love of automobiles, in September 2017, thanks to the contribution of the Lombardy Region, the Foundation wanted to build an automobile museum in the old parking lot at the entrance to the Vittoriale – L’Automobile it is female – which testified to the Poet’s love for machines, the symbol par excellence of modernity, speed and progress.
In the rooms of the new museum you can admire from the large windows the smallest details of the FIAT Tipo 4 with which the Commander entered Rijeka and from which he never separated, together with the Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8B, the last car of the Vate. The Commander’s cars are joined by a post-war Bentley RType that belonged to Vittorio De Sica and some of the personal items of the Poet are exhibited together with the cars, such as the cotton and linen duster, the car glasses, the cloth cap with the transparent visor, the car headset, the Automobile Club de France card, a trophy and a medal for a car race, the circulation card issued by the Touring Club of Italy for a FIAT car.
The museum set-up was enriched with photographs and a video with vintage images, a real cross-section of Italian history and the history of automobiles at the Vittoriale, which shows d’Annunzio and the architect Maroni going to official meetings , but also more intimate and personal moments such as the arrival of the musicians in Piazzetta Dalmata or the now historic meeting with Tazio Nuvolari.