Shocking art theft on the evening of August 15 at MuMe, the Regional Interdisciplinary Museum of Messina. Thieves managed to enter the exhibition rooms bypassing the alarm systems and security protections, managing to steal masterpieces attributed to the master Antonello da Messina. The criminals acted with precision, taking away three of the five panels belonging to the famous Polyptych of San Gregorio and the double-sided panel with the Madonna and Christ in Pietà, extracted and removed directly from inside a bulletproof case. Police forces immediately intervened on the spot along with forensic specialists, who began technical surveys to reconstruct the dynamics of the break-in and collect useful elements to identify those responsible. The MuMe Management has ordered the museum to be closed to the public today.
Read more Italy loses 434 thousand artisans in ten years
Ask the Sun
The questions are automatically suggested by 24Ore AI
based on the content displayed.
The MuMe Museum
The regional museum of Messina, inaugurated in the new and large complex in June 2017, is dedicated to Maria Accascina, one of the most representative figures of Sicilian art historiography and historical director of the Institute from 1949 to 1963. It stands in the area – according to the museum’s website – where the ruins of the sixteenth-century Basilian monastery of San Salvatore dei Greci once stood, destroyed by the 1908 earthquake, of which the remains of the church layout and the underlying crypt, incorporated into the exhibition area, are still visible. Organized on three levels, two of which are dedicated to the exhibition, it covers an area of 17,118 sqm, also set up in the outdoor spaces with architectural elements. The rich collections, mostly coming from the pre-earthquake city, testify to the relationships and exchanges that have interested Messina since its origins, thanks to the strategic position of the natural port, one of the most important in the Mediterranean.
Read more Fires in Belgium, France, and Spain. Von der Leyen: «Europe on high alert»
Known worldwide for the masterpieces of Antonello da Messina and Caravaggio, the Museum illustrates the history and artistic culture of Messina from prehistoric settlement in the 4th millennium BC to the 19th century. Since 1911, the nineteenth-century Mellinghoff Spinning Mill, which remained intact and is still part of the large museum complex, housed the works coming from the first shelters, becoming the seat of the national museum since its establishment in 1914, under the direction of Enrico Mauceri, to whom we owe the first arrangement of the collections and the inauguration in 1922. The project for a new building, presented by Francesco Valenti in 1916, was abandoned, and the idea of restoring the Monte di Pietà as the definitive seat of the Museum, according to Armando Dillon’s project, faded away. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the collections were stored in the Monastery of San Placido Calonerò, to be returned to the old location after the war. The reorganization of the Museum after the damage caused by the bombings is due to Maria Accascina. After years of intense work and many difficulties, Accascina reopened it in 1954, with a modern museographic project.
Read more Too hot, stop to summer skiing on the Stelvio glacier
