The futurists wanted to burn the museums, and this is the only Italian museum founded by a futurist. It was willed by Fortunato Depero, the artist from Rovereto who designed the conical little bottle of Campari Soda in 1932: he planned the whole thing himself, room by room, and opened it in 1959 in a building in the centre that in the middle ages had been the pawn bank.
What to see
The museum is not just the container of the works: it is a work. Depero designed the fittings, the wall coverings, the signs, the way things were to hang. He died the year after it opened without having finished, but he left a quantity of sketches saying how he wanted it, and the restoration worked from those.
Today the house is part of the museum of modern and contemporary art of Trento and Rovereto and holds temporary shows on the themes that were his: design, applied arts, advertising graphics. The first, when it reopened, was devoted to the six-legged dog of Eni, a mark everyone knows and almost nobody looks at.
Visiting
The house is in via Portici, in the centre of Rovereto, ten minutes on foot from the station; its own ticket or a combined one with the other sites, closed on Mondays. An hour.
Our editors' tip
Do not look only at what is hanging: look at what holds it. The shelves, the panels, the colours of the walls, the lettering were designed by the same man who made the pictures. It is something painters almost never do, and here you can check it room by room.
