Emilia Romagna Castles

On Friday, Dec. 1, at 5 p.m., the Cultural Center Market offers the opening/show of the exhibition "Once Upon a Time... An Exhibition of Vintage Toys and Toys Zanella/Pasqualini Collection of the Teatrino dell'Es of Castenaso."
The exhibition brings together several hundred toys that welcome visitors and lead them on a magical journey among dolls, tin toys, antique board games and many rocking horses made of wood, tin, papier-mâché, plastic, of all shapes and colors from all over the world.
An exhibition aimed at the eyes of children, but also at the hearts of adults.
An emotional journey into the world of fantasy and childhood, which comes to life thanks to the pieces that Rita Pasqualini and Vittorio Zanella, award-winning world-famous artists, have collected with tenacity and devotion over many years.
Curator and collector Vittorio Zanella tells us, " I asked myself, why did toys appeal to my imagination, so much so that I started the collection over 44 years ago, with the invaluable help of my wife Rita Pasqualini.
One of my childhood aspirations was that, when I could, I would start collecting the objects I wanted as a child, so once I became a puppeteer, a student of the great Maestro Otello Sarzi Madidini, I began my great collection that became immense over time, transformed in 2000, during the year of "Bologna Capitale Europea della Cultura" into "Museo dei burattini - collezione Zanella/Pasqualini," established together with my wife Rita, at the "Casina del '400," made available to us for 50 years, free of charge, by the City of Budrio.
Over time our interest as collectors went beyond the puppet and marionette theater, so that we found ourselves acquiring the first rocking horse, then tilting, tricycle or buggy, joined by 200 and more, always trying to find unseen and missing things from the collection, so that we moved on to Scandinavia to look for objects related to the childhood of those places, then to the Massif Central of France, where we found in Sarlat a very rare iron horse and buggy, which belonged to an old town carousel, and again to England with the spring tin horses and to the home of the spring toy in Nuremberg, Germany.
Here our interest went both to toys more suited to children, but also to women's toys, so that dolls of all kinds and periods arrived, still in biscuit, with movable eyes of blown glass and hair of silk "filugello," or with wigs of real hair and still dolls of rag and lenci cloth. We hope that the short but intense journey into the world of childhood, will allow visitors to rediscover those ancient, even affective flavors, seemingly lost, but still latent in the depths of hearts. Toys that can therefore still excite, making us all children again, or more conscious adults..."

Two meetings are scheduled during the exhibition:
Dec. 14 at 6 p.m. "In the Realm of the Possible. The importance of play in the formation of the child."
Conference - meeting with Micol Tuzi, pedagogist of the Municipality of Bologna
Jan. 9 at 3:30 p.m. "Games and popular toys between the 1800s and 1900s"
Lecture by Gian Paolo Borghi

The exhibition will be open until Jan. 21.

Argenta (Fe) - Market cultural center
December 1, 2023 - January 21, 2024
Hours:
Exhibition visiting hours:
Market cultural center contemporary art
Marconi Square, 1 Argenta (Fe)

Tuesday, Wednesday 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. | 3:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Sunday 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
closed Mondays and January 1
Special holiday opening: Christmas, Boxing Day and Epiphany

For information:
Tel. 800 111 760 0532-330276 iatargenta@comune.argenta.fe.it www.comune.argenta.fe.it