Museum Alberto Moravia

The Alberto Moravia Museum House is the house where the writer, critic, essayist and member of the European Parliament, Alberto Moravia (Rome, 1907-1990) lived. After having lived with Elsa Morante in via dell’Oca, the writer moved to this house on Lungotevere della Vittoria in 1963, living first with Dacia Maraini and later with Carmen Llera.

L’uomo come fine - a collection of essays on the modern human condition - and the novel L’attenzione, are some of Alberto Moravia’s works completed after he moved in the early 60s to the house on Lungotevere della Vittoria, where one can still imagine him, sitting at his wooden desk carved by the sculptor Sebastian Shadhauser, writing with his Olivetti 82.

On the 103rd anniversary of the birth of the writer (Rome, November 28, 1907 - Rome, September 26, 1990). the house in Rome, overlooking the River Tiber, has now become the Alberto Moravia House Museum. It opens its doors for the first time to the public on December 1, 2010. With this new acquisition by the Cultural Policies and Communication - Superintendence of Cultural Heritage in collaboration with the Associazione Fondo Alberto Moravia and with the organizational support of Zètema Progetto Cultura, the house has become the 18th museum of the Civic Museums Network.

Many of the works written by Moravia have been published after the moved, with Dacia Maraini, to the apartment in the Roman district of the Vittorie, in the spring of 1963. To this period (the 70s and 80s) belong the following works: La rivoluzione culturale in Cina, Il paradiso, Io e lui, A quale tribù appartieni?, Boh, La vita interiore, Lettere dal Sahara, 1934, Storie della Preistoria, La cosa e altri racconti, L’uomo che guarda, L’inverno nucleare, Passeggiate africane, Il viaggio a Roma, La villa del venerdì, La donna leopardo, Diario europeo, Romildo.

The apartment - now headquarters of the Associazione Fondo Alberto Moravia - is divided into a series of rooms, connected by two corridors, which still reveal the personal style of the landlord: a lounge with a large terrace overlooking the Tiber , a Seventies-style kitchen, a bedroom and study.

Numerous paintings and portraits of the writer are hung on the walls of the house: these works testify his relationship with the protagonists of the Italian art scene: Renato Guttuso, Mario Schifano, Sergio Vacchi, Giulio Turcato, Corrado Cagli, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Leonardo Cremonini, Onofrio Martinelli, Adriana Pincherle (Moravia’s sister) and others. Noteworthy is the collection of traditional masks and objects from collected in the numerous trips to Africa, Asia and South America

The Library, one of the most interesting element of the house, contains evidence of the many and varied interests cultivated by Moravia, e.g. Italian and foreign literature, books and essays on visual arts, politics, psychoanalysis, non-European cultures; the Archive contains also about 15,000 documents including letters, manuscripts and newspapers.