Le città visibili. The modern city between imagination and reality

Fondazione Cirulli inaugurates, on the occasion of Arte Fiera 2026, the new exhibition section Le città visibili. The Birth of the Modern City between Imagination and Reality. The project offers an intense and multifaceted reading of architectural and urban imagery in Italian culture during the first half of the twentieth century, bringing together some of the most significant contributions from architecture and the visual arts.

In the wake of the Futurist revolution of the early decades of the century, the city becomes the privileged site in which the new demands of modernity emerge: speed and movement assert themselves as symbols of a future already underway. Railway stations and airports, foundries, factory chimneys, gasometers, and suburbs define an unprecedented landscape, shaping the urban face of the twentieth century.

Cities thus become true laboratories of experimentation, where new urbanistic and architectural languages take shape through materials such as concrete, iron, and glass, called upon to combine functionality and aesthetic value. At the same time, the introduction of emerging technologies—from electric light to radio, from the automobile to the airplane—drives a powerful acceleration in the country’s development.

The city grows, stratifies, and renews itself, transforming at the same time the life and identity of those who inhabit it.

At the same venue, on Sunday 8 February at 6:00 pm Giordano Bruno Guerri presents Audacia Ribellione Velocità. Vite strabilianti dei futuristi italiani, in conversation with journalist Massimo Cutò, to retrace the explosion and dynamics of Futurism, the most important Italian historical avant-garde.

The exhibition, open to the public until 8 February 2026, is part of the program of ART CITY Bologna 2026.