Polo Museale “Antonio Gramsci”
In the heart of Ghilarza’s historic center, along Corso Umberto I, the expansion of the Antonio Gramsci House Museum was a silent yet decisive gesture, capable of stitching together past and present, matter and thought.
The project involved the original building, declared a National Monument, and two adjacent residential units, once separate, now united into a single architectural entity. An act of reconnection that goes beyond the simple sum of spaces, becoming a new domestic landscape for memory, reflection, and research. In compliance with the protection imposed by Legislative Decree 42/2004, each intervention was carried out with almost surgical care: the historic front on the Corso was preserved as an immobile threshold between eras, while at the rear the transformation manifested itself with contemporary lightness. The partial demolition of the former PCI headquarters and adjacent units allowed for the insertion of a new architectural volume, conceived not as a counterpoint, but as a material and luminous echo of Gramsci’s birthplace. Lime Stone and basalt—materials rooted in a deep-rooted and austere Sardinian tradition—have been reinterpreted with sobriety and precision, alternating with glass surfaces that offer glimpses and reflections, creating a constant dialogue between interior and exterior, between the built space and the Gramscian landscape.
The new complex now houses a reception hall, a ticket office, a bookshop, exhibition spaces, and a multipurpose room, as well as spaces designed for work, reading, and sharing. The House Museum, the beating heart of the project, hosts a narrative journey that unfolds through childhood, adolescence, and thought, preserving the aura of the original site intact. Here, every detail—a stone threshold, a window, a corridor—becomes part of a discreet grammar of memory. At the top, the new terrace built on the roof of the new volume opens like a suspended gaze over the landscape. From there, one embraces the landscape that nourished Gramsci’s imagination, offering the visitor a moment of silence and vision: a place where architecture retreats to leave room for thought
