Museum Dedicated To Poet Lord Byron To Open In Italy
A spectacular museum dedicated to the great romantic poet and philhellene Lord Byron is due to open in Italy’s northern city of Ravenna. The building will be shrouded in history as it will be housed in the same residence where the British satirist pursued a passionate affair with the wife of the aristocrat who owned the building, and where he completed some his most famous works.
Palazzo Guiciolli, located in the heart of the Italian city, has been restored by the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation. From November 29 it will open its doors to visitors who will be able to wander through the rooms where Lord Byron romanced Countess Teresa Guiciolli, the aristocrat owner’s wife, and where he completed masterpieces such as Don Juan and The Prophecy of Dante.
Lord Byron brazenly moved into Palazzo Guiciolli in 1819 after meeting the countess at a party in Venice. He died in Greece in 1824 and had several affairs in his life, but the countess was his last, great love.
What will visitors see at Lord Byron’s museum
The museum, which the foundation claims is the only one in the world specifically dedicated to Lord Byron, will have interactive virtual reality technology, which will allow visitors to relive the poet’s experiences in Italy and see how the country inspired him.
In one of the rooms there are still tokens of Byron’s love kept by the countess, including letters, jewelry, locks of the poet’s hair and even shards of his sunburned skin.
Part of the museum will be dedicated to the Resorgimento, a 19th-century Italian movement for unification. In Ravenna, Lord Byron demonstrated his passion for politics and engaged in the fight for the independence of Italy before doing the same in Greece.
“The idea is to link three aspects of who Lord Byron was—the poet, the lover and the person oriented towards freedom,” said a spokesperson for the museum.
Lord Byron’s intriguing life in Europe
George Gordon Byron was born in 1788 and is considered to be one of the greatest British poets. He fled England for mainland Europe in 1816, leaving behind a complicated personal life and a lot of debt. He never returned to England. He lived for seven years in Italy, in Venice, Ravenna and Pisa, where he followed the countess in 1821.
During his time in Ravenna he was known by the people as “the crazy Englishman.” He often received visits from his friends Thomas Moore, the Irish poet and writer, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, a major British romantic poet.
In 1823, growing bored with Italy, he left for Greece. There he joined forces with the Greek insurgents fighting the War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks admire him as a folk hero. He died of a fever in the Greek city of Missolonghi at the age of 36 and is buried in his family vault in Nottinghamshire, in England. The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply and Dionysios Solomos, Greece’s national poet, wrote a poem in his honor named To the Death of Lord Byron.
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