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Naples Exhibition: Mazzacurati's 'Art and Resistance' Opens at Maschio Angioino Through November 2026
A free show inside Castel Nuovo traces the plaster and bronze studies behind the city's Monument to the Four Days.
What is Naples' new Mazzacurati exhibition about?
"Arte e Resistenza a Napoli. Il percorso creativo di Marino Mazzacurati" opened on Tuesday 29 September at the Fondazione Valenzi, inside Castel Nuovo — the medieval fortress on Piazza Municipio everyone in Naples calls the Maschio Angioino — and runs through 14 November 2026. It reconstructs how sculptor Marino Mazzacurati arrived at his Monument to the Four Days through preparatory bozzetti in plaster and bronze, drawings and studies, first reported by the Fondazione Valenzi and confirmed by local outlets Controluce, PerSempreNews and Focus Italia Web.
Alongside the monument studies, the show includes other Mazzacurati works on horses and dancers that the artist gave to Maurizio Valenzi, Naples' mayor from 1975 to 1983, plus a selection of photographs from the Archivio Fotografico Parisio-Troncone documenting the Neapolitan Resistance. Opening afternoon closed with a screening of "Marino Mazzacurati. Artigiano della storia," a documentary by Riccardo Biadene and Gianluca Greco, at 15:00.
Hours, price, and where to find it
The Fondazione Valenzi's rooms sit inside Castel Nuovo on Piazza Municipio, in the Sala Litza Cittanova Valenzi. Entry to the exhibition is free, open Monday to Friday, 11:00 to 17:00, excluding public holidays and pre-holidays — it doesn't require the paid ticket that covers Castel Nuovo's own museum halls, since the foundation occupies its own wing of the castle.
Why the Monument to the Four Days still matters
The Quattro Giornate di Napoli were four days of popular uprising in September 1943 that drove German occupying forces out of the city before Allied troops arrived — one of the events Naples marks its modern identity by. Mazzacurati won the competition to commemorate it in 1964 and the finished monument, four large bronze-and-stone steles, was inaugurated on 14 June 1969 in Piazza della Repubblica, on the seafront toward Mergellina. The steles were actually removed in 2008 for Metro Line 6 construction and only went back on display in 2022, so most visitors walking the Lungomare today pass a relatively recent restoration without knowing the backstory — which is exactly what the sketches on show at the Maschio Angioino fill in.
Castel Nuovo sits two minutes from the Municipio stop on metro Linea 1 and from the ferry terminals at Molo Beverello, an easy add-on between a centro storico morning and a Lungomare afternoon. Anyone curious to see the finished monument itself can extend the walk along the seafront to Piazza della Repubblica, roughly 20 minutes on foot.
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