Museum of Civilization

The MUCIV-Museum of Civilization, established in 2016 in Rome's EUR district, is housed in two locations: the Palazzo delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari (Palace of Arts and Popular Traditions) and the Palazzo delle Scienze (Palace of Science). The latter, a 20th-century building, houses prehistoric and protohistoric, paleontological and litho-mineralogical, early medieval, archaeological, ethnographic, and historical-artistic collections from outside Europe. This location has undergone a transformation of its exhibition spaces, aimed at reorganizing and harmonizing the collections without altering the architectural characteristics of the building.

The project, curated by Isolarchitetti, not only involved work on the exhibition layout, expanding and reorganizing the museum space, but also included visitor services, with the creation of a bookshop, a temporary shop, and a new café-restaurant. Finally, the MUCIV enhancement project involved the creation of a single ticket office, which allows visitors to access the prehistoric and ethnographic collections directly from the monumental staircase of the former Pigorini Museum, the early medieval collections, and the new spaces dedicated to the collections of the IsIAO, IsMEO, and the former Tucci Museum.

The structural project involved both the work necessary to renovate the spaces and the installation of new systems. This included opening up the floors to create vertical passages (wells), installing the elevator shaft, forming support bases for roof systems, and creating openings in the existing masonry. To expand the usable space for museum storage, metal mezzanines were built in the basement.

The design phases were preceded by a preliminary study, which first of all made it possible to develop a project sensitive to the architectural characteristics of the building, eliminating inconsistent elements built in periods subsequent to the original. The study also made it possible to implement the plant systems in accordance with current regulations without altering the legibility of the building itself.