MAXXI National Museum Rom

MAXXI Architettura is the first national museum of architecture to be established in Italy,
its roots in the Italian cultural and territorial context defining its identity.

Two distinct spirits coexist in the museum, one devoted to the historicizing of the architecture of the 20th Century and the other responding to issues of the present, interpreting the expectations of present day society. A museum that is both historical and contemporary therefore; one in which past and present intersect, adopting forms and methods suitable for developing a particular knowledge path and analysing trends and personalities, cultural models and social behaviours.

The museum undertakes research and promotional activities including temporary exhibitions offering visitors ever diverse opportunities for fruition and in-depth examination: on the ground floor, Galleria 1 hosts the XX century exhibitions while the photography exhibitions are staged in the Sala Carlo Scarpa; on the first floor Galleria 2 instead hosts exhibitions on XXI century architecture. Acquisitions, production activities and research promoted directly by the museum and jointly with other institutions derive from the cultural programme.

The museum’s activities explore the architectural discipline’s confines and intersections with other creative fields and are intended to present to the public the new idioms, the variety of the issues, the multiplicity of subjects and the trends characterising current national and international research.

MAXXI Architettura is a museum, archive, library and mediatheque (MAXXI B.A.S.E.), and above all the physical space that welcomes, involves and introduces people of all ages to architecture.

The MAXXI Architettura Collections (XX Century Collections, XXI Collections, Photography Collections), curated and managed by the MAXXI Architettura’s Archive Centre and Photography Centre, comprise all those artefacts and documents that, in diverse forms, represent the material and conceptual complexity of architecture through its evolutionary processes: from design idea to physical realisation, through to its use and insertion in the physical and cultural context.