Exhibitions and festivals: Italy's cultural autumn spans art, archaeology and technology

Three distinct cultural offerings mark the Italian autumn, each with its own audience and its own language.

In Rome, the Museo di Roma at Palazzo Braschi has hosted since yesterday ‘Art Without Borders’, the exhibition dedicated to Keith Haring, open until 11 April 2027. A long window, covering the entire span of autumn and winter, dedicated to the American artist known for his direct graphic language and for his use of public space as an expressive surface.

Also in Rome, at the Museo Nazionale Romano, ‘Aegyptus - Dal Nilo al Mediterraneo’ continues, an immersive exhibition combining video art, archaeology and artificial intelligence to tell the story of the Roman presence in the oases of the Egyptian western desert between the 1st century B.C. and the 5th century A.D. It was commissioned by the Ministero della Cultura and the Museo Nazionale Romano; the curatorship bears the names of Alfonsina Russo, Angelo Piero Cappello, Federica Rinaldi, Alessio De Cristofaro and Elisabetta Bruscolini. The choice to pair digital tools with archaeological finds aims to make accessible a lesser-known chapter of the Roman presence in Egypt, that of the oases of the western desert, far from the more familiar routes of archaeological tourism.

In Sicily, in the year of its twentieth anniversary, the festival Le Vie dei Tesori returns from Saturday 10 October to Sunday 8 November with a special edition spread across five weekends. The programme includes 27 venues, 25 experiences and three walking tours, involving, alongside Palermo, also Catania, Caltanissetta, Castelvetrano, Corleone, Marsala, Sciacca, Santa Flavia and Termini Imerese. Twenty years after its first edition, the festival retains the formula that has made it recognisable: opening to the public places that are normally closed or little visited, spreading the offering across several Sicilian cities instead of concentrating it solely in the regional capital.

Three initiatives differing in format — a monographic exhibition, an immersive project on a single archaeological theme, a festival spread across several cities — which together make up a packed cultural calendar in this part of autumn, with opening dates following one another within a few days: from 6 October for Haring, to 10 October for Le Vie dei Tesori.