MIRABILIA ART GALLERY

Opposite the Roman Forum, near the Circus Maximus and the Mouth of Truth, in the middle of Rome’s ancient splendour, the window of an unusual gallery opens on via San Teodoro with a majestic sweet-eyed tiger that looks at passers-by. It invites them to get in following their curiosity and sometimes it also frightens them, but only those who pause and pay attention will understand that the tiger is stuffed, and not alive and kicking as it seems.
It is not a huge space, but it’s big enough to house various species of stuffed animals. In addition to the tiger there are a giraffe’s entire neck and head, a moose’s head, an entire lion that loves books and the huge head of an African elephant (and though I have been to many zoos in my life, to pause under the hugeness of an elephant’s head is striking, it expresses precisely the dimensions of reality and of my humble conditions). There were shells, fossils, a dinosaur’s skull, a real meteorite (you would never believe how much it weighs!), the spacesuit worn by the Soviet cosmonaut Strekalov, a Nineteenth Century mannequin, corals, stones... and a charming and comfortable sitting room that invites you to pause, contemplate and think freely. A merry-go-round for my little head brutalised and made heavier by everyday life, a place where I can abandon myself to exploration and go down in the deep adventure that I thought I had lost when I was a child. With my mouth wide open and a series of hesitant and smothered #OHH, I look around lingering on every detail. I would like to know the name of everything, its origin, its story... and I grow more and more aware of my ignorance but above all of my seclusion.
The host or gallery owner Giano Del Bufalo has been a collector ever since he was a child, when his father, an archaeologist, brought him to Africa to discover treasures which we mere mortals can only read about in books and the luckiest of us can see in museums. Over the years Giano has set up his own private Wunderkammer in the family castle in Cecchignola, his personal collection of all that he loves and that arouses wonder in him, until one day, “A friend of mine owned this wonderful place and offered to rent it to me and I immediately accepted in order to make my collection a bit more public and create the MIRABILIA ART GALLERY, which exhibits, according to my aesthetic sense, things that other people and I have collected over the years, somehow bringing back to life the Seventeenth century European Wunderkammers. I have always been fascinated by the world of exotica collections.”
MIRABILIA ART GALLERY is a completely self-supported cultural association, they do not sell anything at the moment but the place is often rent out to cinema and advertising: “It is a job that gives me the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people. I can show the pieces of my collection, establish new connections and share my passion.”
The MIRABILIA Prince—I will call Giano by this name from now on, because he owns a castle and is the sovereign lord of this Wunderkammer in the old city of Rome—states that he has always been fascinated by the macabre world of human and animal anatomy, and even by geology, the study of stones and minerals, but his true love was born one day when another friend of his called him and told him that a big museum, closed, abandoned and in distress was accepting offers by private citizens for pieces of the collection that otherwise would have been burnt. “I went and bought my entire collection of animals for little money. The big wave of leathers and animal anatomy in my life was born. Like this tiger, the more I look at it the more I fall in love with it, it is alive. I brought all the museum pieces to Rome, in order to restore them, they were damaged by the fire’s smoke and the leathers were ruined because of wrong juxtapositions. I am not a taxidermist, but I can restore pieces, I have learnt to do it by studying and working with taxidermist Annamaria Bertoni. When I opened and the forest rangers learnt that there was a madman with a place full of animals they immediately came here to inspect the place because poaching is punished by imprisonment, but all these animals have a letter of provenance, they are all certified, all of them died from a wound or old age. No, I am not a hunter who has gone crazy.”
The objects inside the gallery change according to the mood of the host who tells me, “It’s a museum, a room of wonders, an art gallery, a Wunderkammer, I often change things, I take something, or lend something. Wunders always have this idea of dust, of entanglement of things, and I wanted to clean it up a bit, I didn’t want an asphyxiating dusty space. I am very tidy, clean and  meticulous. On the walls I have recalled the shade of green of the old French science buildings, this green is the most contrasting colour for the forensics, it makes things come out. Then I cleaned up the early Nineteenth century ceiling beams that had been covered... I find this place amusing, fascinating, on this classic street that during the night when the Roman Forum is illuminated fills up with magic and history. I like it a lot.”
This is how my visit to this place of wonders in Rome ends—a place where people still believe in exchanging passion and curiosity, where people deeply love history and antiquities, a small club with doors open to all those who are interested. Next autumn this place will host an interesting series of weekly meetings organized by Bizzarro Bazar under the title of ACADEMY OF MAGIC. There will be meetings with makers of dream maps, masters of illusions, explorers of the uncanny... to re-educate our look to the vertigo of wonder! And for the most relaxed ones there will also be a small library where you can browse through the MIRABILIA TASCHEN titles. You can find all the news on the MIRABILIA ART GALLERY facebook page.