How Italy is reinventing art for blind and visually impaired visitors

Long after the throngs of tourists had departed Rome’s iconic Colosseum, a small group recently explored the darkened amphitheatre, pausing to absorb its history, art, and architecture through every sense but sight.

Among them was Michela Marcato, 54, who has been blind since birth, touring the site with her partially sighted partner. Their experience highlights Italy’s renewed commitment to making its vast artistic heritage accessible to people with blindness or low vision, enriching how all visitors perceive and engage with art.

As her guide spoke, Ms Marcato’s fingers traced a small souvenir model of the Colosseum. She felt the grooves of its archways and the rugged texture of its crumbled side, a tactile exploration that revealed a detail she had never grasped before: the building’s elliptical shape.

"Walking around it, I personally would never have realised it. I would never have understood it," she said. "But with that little model in your hand, it’s obvious!"

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Italy, with its art-filled cities, has never lacked tourists, yet it has historically struggled to accommodate visitors with disabilities. Wheelchair users often encounter narrow elevators and doorways, stairs without ramps, and uneven pavements.

However, a significant shift began in 2021. As a condition for receiving European Union pandemic recovery funds, Italy accelerated its accessibility initiatives, dedicating increased attention and resources to dismantling architectural barriers and enhancing access to its tourist sites and sporting venues.

The ancient city of Pompeii, for instance, has recently implemented a new signage system designed to make the sprawling archaeological site more accessible for blind and disabled individuals. This project incorporates Braille signs, QR-coded audio guides, tactile models, and bas-relief replicas of excavated artefacts. Similarly, Florence has published a comprehensive guide detailing accessibility options at the Uffizi Gallery and its other museums.

This guide provides detailed information on routes and requirements, including the necessity of companions, for sites like the Boboli Gardens, which, due to their historic structures, cannot be fully accessible.

An inclusive tourism model not only upholds the human rights of people with disabilities but also offers significant economic advantages. According to the World Tourism Organisation, nearly half of the global population over 60 lives with a disability, and disabled travellers typically bring two or more companions.

Giorgio Guardi, a tour guide with the Radici Association, which has organised tours of Rome for people with disabilities since 2015, explains that the goal of accessible tourism is to craft an enjoyable experience for everyone, including companions.

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This often involves a slower pace, encouraging visitors to touch what is permissible, and engaging with artwork through diverse senses. The association frequently arranges walking tours at night, when fewer people are present and ambient noise at famous landmarks is reduced, allowing for a more focused sensory experience.

However, direct physical interaction with artworks is not always possible for blind individuals, necessitating creative approaches from guides. Consider Rome’s central Campo dei Fiori piazza and its imposing statue of Giordano Bruno, the 16th-century philosopher burned at the stake for alleged heresy during the Inquisition. The statue, perched atop a large pedestal, is too high to touch.

On a recent nighttime tour, Mr Guardi encouraged his clients to embody Bruno’s posture: hunched over, cloaked in a heavy hooded cape, and clutching a book. As one client adopted the pose, Mr Guardi draped the cape over him. Others in the group then lined up to touch the ‘Bruno impersonator’, feeling the contours of his slumped shoulders, heavy with the symbolic weight of the Inquisition. Deaf visitors also participated in the tour, assisted by a sign-language interpreter who recounted Bruno’s tragic end.

Aldo and Daniela Grassini, both blind, were passionate travellers and art collectors who grew increasingly frustrated by the restrictions on touching art in museums worldwide. In the early 1990s, they founded what would become Italy’s only publicly funded tactile museum, the Museo Omero, located in the Adriatic coastal city of Ancona, where all art is designed to be handled.

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Named after the blind poet Homer, the museum showcases life-sized replicas of some of Italy’s most celebrated artworks, from ancient Roman and Greek statues to the head of Michelangelo’s David, alongside contemporary pieces.

"Touching something isn’t like looking at it," said Aldo Grassini. "Not just because of the emotion it offers, but because of the type of knowledge that sensation provides." He argued that sight is an "overbearing sense that tends to monopolise reality," whereas touch offers a distinct dimension.

"We love with our eyes and with our hands. If we are in love with a person or an object that is particularly dear to us, is it enough to just look at it? No, we need to caress it, because caressing gives you a different emotion," he explained.

Felice Tagliaferri, a blind artist whose work is displayed at the museum, exemplifies this philosophy. In his studio on the outskirts of Cesena, Mr Tagliaferri points to a marble bust he sculpted of his late friend Angela. He recalled that before Angela succumbed to breast cancer, he lay in bed with her, caressing her bald head. "When she passed away, Angela remained in my hands, and I recreated this sculpture thinking of her," he said.

Ms Marcato, who toured the Colosseum, shares a smart apartment on Rome’s east side with her partner Massimiliano Naccarato. Their living room is dominated by a large painting of the sea. Mr Naccarato, who can see by enlarging images on his mobile phone and with special lights, bought the painting to commemorate a professional award, and it holds pride of place in their home. He installed a special light behind the artwork to enhance his view.

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Ms Marcato cannot see it at all, but she is acutely aware of its presence. Her personal experiences at the beach profoundly shape her appreciation of the painting. For her, the artwork evokes her deep affection for the sea, "for the noise it makes, for the thousand different sounds it produces, for the smell you breathe in, for the walks you can take in any season." It is a profoundly sensory way of appreciating art, entirely independent of sight.