The Capitoline Museums and ENEL bring the hidden treasure of Rome to the world

Ignazio Roberto Marino, Mayor of Rome, has signed today with Francesco Starace, CEO and General Manager of Enel, a Memorandum of Understanding that will extend the agreement to develop the cultural programme "The Hidden Treasure of Rome", signed in May 2014 by Enel Green Power (EGP) and the City of Rome, to the entire Enel Group.

The ceremony, held in Rome's Piazza del Campidoglio, was also attended by the City of Rome's Councillor for Culture, Giovanna Marinelli, the Cultural Heritage Capitoline Superintendent, Claudio Parisi Presicce and the CEO of EGP, Francesco Venturini.

"The Hidden Treasure of Rome" represents the very first agreement making it possible for researchers from around the world to access the entire collection of works from the Ancient Rome that in the past were only partially studied.

For over a century, hundreds of thousands of historical artefacts dating back to before the founding of Rome have been carefully preserved in more than a thousand crates at the Municipal Antiquarium of the Capitoline Museums. These artefacts have also been exceptionally exhibited in the past, without being properly studied.

Thanks to this agreement, artefacts never documented before will be liberated from storage, allowing them to be taken overseas and, for the first time, studied and analysed by the world's most high-profile universities and museums selected by the Capitoline Superintendence. Once the artefacts have been thoroughly examined and catalogued they will be returned to Rome, ready to be displayed in major exhibits.

The project was launched in May 2014 with Enel Green Power and has already enabled 249 black-gloss ceramic artefacts, part of the hall V collection of the old Antiquarium Complex of Parco del Celio, to be taken to Missouri University in the USA, which has set up a special research and study programme run under the supervision of the Capitoline Museum curators.

Projects with other major US universities with the aim of replicating this model are currently at their definition stage.

In the coming years the project will be extended even further with the involvement of the entire Enel Group, thanks to its presence in 30 countries.

A great many of the world's leading museums and university archaeology and art history departments will be involved, to help devise targeted study and research programmes for these treasures, as well as promoting them with exhibitions and other events.

Enel Green Power will also be sponsoring the restoration work on the Hall of Emperors in the Capitoline Museums' Palazzo Nuovo.

The new Memorandum of Understanding confirms the Enel Group's commitment to support the proposals made by the curators of the Capitoline Museums for the restoration and highlighting of sites of archaeological interest such as the Antiquarium complex, in the Parco del Celio, which has been closed since 1939.