The permanent collection of Museo di Roma in Trastevere shows popular everyday life in Rome between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, filtering it through the eyes of the artists that represented it. It includes collections of paintings, prints, drawings and watercolours that are displayed in rotation. In a room of the museum, Studio Azzurro created a multimedia environment about the Roman poet Carlo Alberto Salustri, also known as Trilussa. The installation was designed to narrate the poet in his complexity as a public and private figure, with the friends and women that surrounded him.

Inside the room there are objects and furnishings from Trilussa’s studio home, which help recalling his everyday life. Moving images are projected among the empty spaces left in the tight texture of frames, shelves and knick-knacks, thus completing the tale told by objects: a rotating projector unexpectedly stops on four spots on the walls to show short actions. A chessboard belonging to the poet is animated by an ongoing game. Newspapers and letters from Trilussa’s time unroll one on the other, going over the poet’s career. Trilussa’s portraits slide inside a frame; some archive footage shows Anna Magnani reciting some of his poems.

One after the other, the direct testimonies of Trilussa’s private and public life thus take shape, making it possible for the visitor to understand his poetry in the light of the everyday nature of his objects and existence. In this narrative room, a collection – too wide to be exhibited in full – is virtually recalled and becomes a connection between the audience and Trilussa’s personal world.