le opere, i giorni

le opere, i giorni
un diario del Palazzo Ducale di Urbino
a film di Mauro Santini

The Reasons
On the exceptional occasion of the restoration and system installation works, and of the new setup that have been taking place since 2023 on the first floor of the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino, an idea gradually took shape: creating a film that would convey the feeling of a unique experience in the recent history of this Museum, while also offering a new understanding of the Palace, its transformations, and its life.
The film is just the first in a series of initiatives that the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino will launch to disseminate the numerous knowledge acquisitions and questions raised by these interventions, largely funded through the EU Recovery funds. In the near future, a conference and a scientific publication will follow.

The Setup
In a desire to share with a wider audience what the building site has gradually revealed, a space within the Palazzo was dedicated to viewing and contemplation. Not a mere screening room, but a fully fledged temporary cinema: a threshold between the museum and the worksite itself, between the practical dimension of actions and the more intimate realm of memory and observation. An open framework in which the Palazzo appears not as a finished, static image, but as a living organism traversed by time, care, and interpretation. In the foyer, an atlas of images, notes, and fragments captures the collective nature of these years of work: a constellation of perspectives through which the traces of archival research and the daily activities of the site seep through.

The Film
le opere, i giorni. un diario dal Palazzo Ducale di Urbino discretely slips into the worksite’s noisy life, taking us behind the curtains of a three-yearlong path made of uncertainties, discoveries, and transformations. An unusual point of view, in medias res, on the enchanted harmony of one of the most significant sites of the Italian Renaissance and, at a time, a way into the complex structure of the thoughts, tasks, and actions of the characters of this story. Above all, the changing of the light, the passing of seasons, the onlooking perfection
of a silent beauty.