Il Museo storico dell’Arma del Genio occupies the entire ground floor of the building, about 4,400 sq.m. in area, and has the task of witnessing the intimate connection that has always existed between civil society and military engineering in all fields of engineering and architecture. Preceded by two Honour Halls, in which stand out the relics of the engineering lieutenant Camillo Benso count of Cavour and the general Federico Menabrea, scientist and Prime Minister, the Museum is divided into two large sectors:
the first concerns the Engineering Corps in all its specialties, that of peacetime, those formed in wartime and those that have evolved so much over time as to become even autonomous such as the Military Air Force, the Automobile Corps, the Chemical Military Service and the Transmissions.
The second sector is dedicated to the Military Engineering in the various wars that followed each other from the Kingdom of Sardinia, to the Italian State, up to the entire Second World War.
The visitor finds, along the path, a vast documentation that testifies to the importance of the technical and historical aspects of the artifacts. This is the case with the extensive overview of standard and temporary road bridges for the rapid crossing of interruptions: floating bridges among which stands out the 160/14, protagonist of epic river crossings, such as the Piave or the Dnieper in Russia.
Attention is deserved by the Dirigible pilots and Aerostiers who with their fragile means foreshadow the Air Force.
After the salon concerning the Colonies, a large Shrine dedicated to all the Fallen, with an Altar donated by all the Engineering Officers. Follow the rooms dedicated to war campaigns and their relics, starting from the Roman Republic of 1848 – 49, continuing with the Crimean Campaign, 1855 – 56 and with the Siege of Gaeta, 1860 – 61, where the great ossidionale works of general Menabrea and the first rifled cannons of general Cavalli stand out. Follows a wide documentary sequence of transmission means, from signals to fires of the Homeric era, to the use of carrier pigeons, to increasingly perfected optical means and then from the telegraph, to radio and its ingenious inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, captain of the Engineering Corps and his revolutionary devices.
On the first floor is located the Historical Museum of Military Architecture which, with abundance of models and maquettes, illustrates the history of Italian and European military architecture, starting from prehistoric hill forts to Sardinian nuraghi, continuing with Roman fortifications, medieval castles, forts of various eras up to today.
The visit closes with the Giulio Cesare Hall, dedicated to the “First Great Engineer” of history.
The area where the museum stands belongs to the district of Vittoria which constitutes, together with Prati, one of the most unitary expansions of modern Rome, thus allowing a panoramic view of the most interesting architectures carried out in the capital between 1890 and 1935.
