In the year of the centenary and of the tenth anniversary from the opening of the Marconi Museum, there is a firm will to go beyond mere celebrations and instead look toward long-term plans. The museum wants to play its role by launching a project, strongly supported by its President Gabriele Falciasecca, called "Marconi Network". In the last years the museum’s staff have been promoting a number of contacts and events allowing their skills to circulate outside the museum by means of exhibitions, conferences and supporting various initiatives organized in Italy and in many foreign countries. This wealth of contacts and experiences restates the interest and topicality of many reflections on Marconi’s work and on the history of radio communications. Furthermore, thanks to these contacts we were able to discover collectors and keen owners, or managers, of little and big treasures all around Italy.

Thanks to the intrinsic value of these relationships the Marconi Museum has decided to promote the "Marconi Network", the building up of a network of museums and collections on radio communications which will allow a steady dialogue among those lively cultural and scientific communities found all over Italy. The Marconi Foundation will be the "operating director" of the project through the Marconi Museum and – let us stress this point – will aim at increasing the collections’ value, both of those already well-known to the general public and of those less known, but that are sometimes surprisingly interesting for the quantity and quality of their items. So let us reaffirm our intention to stimulate a greater sensitivity towards our valuable historic and scientific heritage and, at the same time, to undertake concrete actions aimed at raising awareness and boosting its to promote awareness and, as a consequence, its accessibility.

The main partner of the project is A.I.R.E. – Associazione Italiana per la Radio d'Epoca (Italian Association of Antique Radio) – thanks to its President Nerio Neri’s valuable work. Many of the collections to be included in the network belong to A.I.R.E.’s members. Here is a draft list:

Ancona: Museo della Marina (Filippo Pacelli Collection)
Arezzo: Museo dei mezzi di comunicazione (Fausto Casi Collection)
Bologna: Museo della Comunicazione e del Multimediale G. Pelagalli
Catania: Francesco Romeo Collection
Cison di Valmarino, Treviso: Museo Comunale
Colleferro, Roma: Cremona Collection
Imperia: Museo della Comunicazione (Angelo Sessa Collection)
Parma: Casa della Musica e Casa del Suono (Patanè Collection)
Ponte di Piave, Treviso: Museo La Bella Radio di Paolo Fadel
Vimercate: Dino Gianni Collection

Here are the names of some other museums that we would like to involve in our initiative:

Tuglie, Lecce: Museo della Radio di Salvatore Giuseppe Micali
Verona: Museo della Radio di Alberto Chiantera

In addition, the Marconi Museum has been collaborating with Museo del Patrimonio Industriale, Bologna, and with Leonardo da Vinci Science and Technology National Museum, Milan, for some time.

Finally the Antique Radio - Servizio Schemi archive (a free consultancy service for fans and researchers organized by the Antique Radio Club) has accepted to take part in our initiative.
Very soon we will invite other museums and collections to participate in order to set up a real "Marconian network", in full keeping with the pioneering spirit of the invention of the Bolognese Nobel Prize recipient.