Disseminating the Italian History of Medicine: Arturo Castiglioni and His Project at the University of Padua, 1933-1942

By Elena Maria Rita Rizzi.

The contribution examines the overlooked project for a museum of the history of medicine at the University of Padua proposed by doctor and professor Arturo Castiglioni in the interwar period. 

Although Castiglioni’s plan was only partially realized, it sheds light on a key moment in the dissemination of Italian medicine via the musealization of its material legacies at the University of Padua and, more broadly, in Italy. 

While reflecting broader trends in the musealization of medicine that emerged between the nineteenth and twentieth century in Europe, Castiglioni’s project highlights the central role played by the history of medicine in shaping the public narrative of the Venetian atheneum and city in the interwar years. 

Embedded, in the late 1930s, in a far-ranging program of patrimonialization of the main university building, Castiglioni’s project also attests to the propagandistic uses of the material culture of medicine, and more broadly science, in fascist Italy and their enduring impact on the public understanding of scientific heritage.

Read the full article: Disseminating the Italian History of Medicine: Arturo Castiglioni and His Project at the University of Padua, 1933-1942.

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Elena Maria Rita Rizzi is currently post-doc researcher at the University of Padua, where she collaborates on the research project “Musealizing the Italian Scientist (1839-1939): Practices, Narratives, Memories.” She earned her PhD at the European University Institute (Florence), where she was mainly trained as a cultural historian.