Open-Air Museum in Tor Marancia.
The Big City Life, the extraordinary cycle of murals produced between 2014 and 2015 in the Tor Marancia neighbourhood in Rome, due also to the patronage of Professor Emanuele F. M. Emanuele, Chairman of Fondazione Roma e Terzo Pilastro Italia-Mediterraneo, has attracted twenty thousand visitors per year, a number that rivals most of the Italian museums and testifies to its success.
This datum is composed of fifteen thousand school and group visitors and five thousand individual visitors, based on median statistics. The project, established by Francesca Mezzano and Stefano Antonelli through the Associazione 999 Contemporary, for the purpose of promoting and spreading street art, has undeniably been a success, both in Italy and abroad.
Indeed, the ATER housing complex, where the world’s best street artists have painted murals, has become famous abroad. The BBC produced a documentary on Big City Life and RAI’s TV series “Tutto può succedere” is set in this area.
Moreover, Big City Life was one of the artworks selected to represent Italy, as an example of architecture at the service of the common good, in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017.
Reviews of Tor Marancia on Tripadvisor, the largest travel site in the world, range from Very Good to Excellent with ratings of 4.5 out of 5 stars, meaning the same as the Musei Capitolini.
Twenty-one artists from eleven countries have worked in Via di Tor Marancia number 63. Seth, Philippe Baudelocque (France), Gaia (USA), Lek & Sowat (France- USA), Jaz (Argentina), Vhils, Pantonio (Portugal), Moneyless, Alberonero, Mr Klevra, Domenico Romeo, Danilo Bucchi, Diamond, Matteo Basilé (Italy), Clemens Behr, SatOne (Germany), Reka (Australia), Jerico (The Philippines), Inti (Chile), Best Ever (U.K) and Caratoes (Hong Kong). Each artist painted 145 square meters, using 974 spray paint cans and 956 litres of paint and took 43 days’ work.
This ‘open-air museum’, was strongly advocated by Professor Emanuele. During the opening ceremony the Professor stated, “Murals are part of my youth. I saw so many in the nineteen sixties and seventies in Los Angeles, Miami and throughout Latin America where I studied and travelled. I believe that this form of art is not inferior to those that have been consecrated for years in museums and galleries, due to its vitality and communicative effectiveness”.
The Big City Life project was enriched with a smartphone app called Tor Marancia 2.0, in 2019, that allows visitors to enjoy all the works in the tenants’ outdoor museum on IOS and Android devices. The app, available in two languages (Italian and English), was developed by the company Megasound thanks to the contribution of Fondazione Cultura e Arte, an instrumentality of Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Internazionale.
