HZERO

A railway panorama of Italy in miniature. The museum is built in the renovated spaces of the former Ariston cinema around a unique work of art: the impressive model railway built by Giuseppe Paternò di San Giuliano. Of Sicilian origin, Giuseppe di San Giuliano was a character with multifaceted cultural interests that ranged from music to art, from architecture to gardens. A great lover of modelling, his interest focused over the years on the train as a synonym for progress, a dream, an art form in motion that crosses manual skills and technology. San Giuliano did not limit himself to imagining a track route, but conceived a real landscape scenery full of details. The result of more than forty years of work, the creation of the model began in the library spaces of his home in Florence and took on its current characteristics also thanks to the collaboration of Carlo Brandolini d'Adda, a great railway modelling expert. The model has an extension of 280 square metres and is one of the largest in Europe. It is presented as a great narrative project in which the spectator enjoys himself, intrigued, tracing an endless number of details and events. It is a magical interweaving of realistic and fantasy scenarios in which landscapes alternate from the mountain profiles of the Dolomites to the seascapes of the island of Elba. The scenography is enriched by a projection system created by the Karmachina studio and the sound component created by the Tempo Reale museum research, production and didactic centre. Visit the site