Turin’s Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano presents “Brigands! Stories and pictures from the Risorgimento to the present day”, from 23 October 2025 to 29 March 2026. This is the first exhibition dedicated to banditry as a complex historical phenomenon and cultural legend spanning over two centuries of Italian history.
Curated by a team of historians from the Universities of Turin, Pisa, Salerno and Padua, the exhibition focuses on one central question: was banditry a demonstration of heroic Southern Italian resistance to the Unification of Italy, or organised crime? Without offering pre-packaged answers, the exhibition restores banditry to its authentic historical context, going beyond romantic representations and contemporary instrumentalization.
The exhibition itinerary is divided into five chronological sections documenting the evolution of the phenomenon: from the anti-French uprisings of the Napoleonic period to the romantic figure of the 19th-century brigand-rebel, from the “war for Southern Italy” after Italian Unification to the persistence of the legend in 20th-century mass culture. Through over 200 exhibits – paintings, photographs, uniforms, weapons, film posters and multimedia materials – from prestigious Italian institutions, the exhibition explores how the brigand or bandit became a cultural icon that still occupies an important place in the collective imagination today.
The exhibition is accompanied by a rich programme of collateral events, including seven meetings with historians, journalists and intellectuals, and a film festival entitled “Briganti e...oltre” (Brigands and...beyond), which presents eight films on the subject of banditry in different film cultures, from Italian cinema to political westerns, from Brazilian cinema to martial arts films.