Italy opens Museum of Italian Language in Florence

Florence: Italy will launch a new Museum of the Italian Language, at the S. Maria Novella complex in Florence today (July 6).

Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini and Florence mayor Dario Nardella will inaugurate the first two rooms of the new museum whose official name is Museo Nazionale dell’Italiano, or MUNDI for short.

The new museum will outline the history and evolution of the Italian language and celebrate Italy’s great writers, from Dante to Boccaccio, Petrarch to Machiavelli.

Overlooking Via della Scala, the museum is housed in a former monastery in a wing of the S. Maria Novella complex which played a decisive role in Dante Alighieri’s studies and in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy.

Works began on the new museum last year, on the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, however the project was stalled due to the covid pandemic.

The project has received funding of €4.5 million from the culture ministry under Italy’s Grandi Progetti scheme, and is promoted by the Accademia della Crusca, the Accademia dei Lincei, the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, the Associazione per la Storia della Lingua Italiana (ASLI) and the Dante Alighieri Society.