The Casa Garibaldi exhibition in Genoa and its opening lecture

From 17 to 30 November 2014 the Palazzo Ducale housed an exhibition on the Italian mutual aid society of Constantinople: Casa Garibaldi, una storia levantina. It was curated by the architect Francesca Faiella and mounted by the Associazione Culturale Balumina; it opened on the evening of 17 November with a lecture of mine.

The exhibition gathered documents, period photographs and films tracing the society from its foundation in 1863 down to that day. One section was given over to 1914: postcards printed for the Esposizione Internazionale Coloniale di Marina e di Igiene Marinara in Genoa, and the temporary pavilion Gino Coppedè designed for it. Inside the pavilion the Galata tower – the Torre del Cristo of the medieval Genoese colony – had been rebuilt in plasterboard; the original still stands.

The accompanying text was written by Gianluca Alberini, who signs it on the page as the society's honorary president. He recounts finding the building, on his arrival in Istanbul in 2010, rich in memory but badly worn, and how the decision to recover it followed; he names TÜRSAB as the sponsor of the restoration. That the exhibition came about at all is owed to Francesca Faiella.