The events concerning the Communal villa and the art gallery have to be told together, united since their birth, they bring us back to the past and reveal unexpected events. In fact, The Villa Comunale, before being "a green park" open to public, was a botanical garden. The botanical garden was established in 1826 by will of the Economic society of the reign of Naples, which took for rent a land right outside Porta San Giorgio, that coincides partly, with the current Villa Comunale; in order to experiment various cultivations.
The economic society, founded in Teramo and named "Società patriottica" in 1789, had the aim to improve and modernize the agriculture and the economy linked to it and to promote the socioeconomic development of the population. The society reached its period of greatest splendour in 1840, when the secretary Ignazio Rossi was elected, he held the position until 1851.
Doctor and naturalist, his contribution was very important. He had lively and brilliant ideas, carried out many projects, scripts and proposals inside the Orto (vegetable garden) and also succeeded in conveying them, thanks to the magazine of national scope and calibre he founded himself in 1838: Gran Sasso d'Italia.
In 1841 the engineer Carlo Forti projected the enlargement of an existing building inside the Orto, to create spaces dedicated to the library, the archive, and a meeting room for the monthly meetings of the partners.
The plants were numerous, some autochthonous and some others coming from distant countries: pear trees, plums, apple trees, almonds and cherries, strawberry trees and Judas trees, pines and jasmine, laurel, Japanese medlar, Sequoia, Aleppo pine and even more.
With the Union of Italy, the history of the Botanical Garden witnesses an abrupt interruption, the owner company decays and between 1882 and 1884 the Botanical Garden was transformed into Villa Comunale. The construction within the park, that was once the seat of the Economic Society, was later used as a Civic Art Gallery.
The constitution of the civic art collections began to take shape, at least as a project, already in 1868 thanks to the dedication of the Mayor Settimio Costantini and at the same time all the parties involved sought a municipal building that could become the seat of the nascent Museum. The very first location was inside the former church of Santa Maria a Bitetto, roughly conceived as a warehouse and not as a real museum.
Over the years other rooms close to the former church were also occupied, as the space was no longer sufficient: for example, two rooms of the former monastery of San Giovanni, which later became the seat of the Gaetano Braga Musical Institute. Between 1885 and 1889 the entire collection, no longer only pictorial but also enriched with archaeological discoveries, found a new location in the former Church of Sant'Anna in San Giorgio and located in the current Via Filippi Pepe. But, as mentioned, the Museum was not yet thought of as a space open to the public, with a collection to be set up, to be studied and made known to the citizens, and why not, even outside the town limits. The civic collection was only catalogued in 1872 by the illustrious director Gennaro Della Monica, who just drew up a simple inventory list of the works, nothing more.
The turning point was the year 1898, when with a resolution of the council, the Town Hall of Teramo granted a weekly opening of the Civic Art Gallery, furthermore the painter Della Monica was asked to draw up a new catalogue this time based on the entire collection.
Further events, such as the increasing attention given to the topic, the expansion of the collection that in 1907 counted 181 items, the acquisition by the Town Council of the small house inside the town park, were the cause of its relocation of 1930 in a site that today still hosts the entire Civic Art Gallery and that used to host the Economic Society.
The building set up as a museum was opened to the public with a permanent staging managed by the circle Amatori and Cultori d’Arte, that organised a certain number of temporary exhibitions.
The Art Gallery witnessed several openings and closures from the post-war period, through the 70s and until 2018 when the Gallery reopened its doors to the public with a renewed staging and with the aim of spreading its important historical, artistic and cultural heritage.
Traduzione: classe 3ALL del Liceo linguistico statale Giannina Milli
