The Ferrucciano Museum project in Gavinana involved the renovation of the building that already housed the old museum, which occupied the first floor. The museum, which had become obsolete in terms of services, accessibility, layout and size, was completely redesigned in collaboration with the scientific committee and under the supervision of the ABAP Soprintendenza. 

The design strategy developed an architectural “programme” on which the various disciplines were grafted: museology, museography and the historical documentary interpretation of the exhibits.

The project has brought the new museum into compliance with accessibility standards for all users thanks to the introduction of an internal lift connecting the three floors and an external stair lift on the side staircase connecting to the square. The importance of this small museum hidden in the Pistoia mountains dates back to the central figure of Francesco Ferrucci, to whom the museum is dedicated. Francesco Ferrucci, also known in the Italian national anthem in the passage ‘... Ogn'uom di Ferruccio / Ha il core, ha la mano ...’ (Every man of Ferruccio has a heart, has a hand ...), is the man who in 1530 attempted to defend Florence from the siege of Charles V in the famous battle of Gavinana, where he died at the hands of Maramaldo, for which Ferrucci's famous phrase is remembered: ‘Coward, you kill a dead man’. The museum was established in the 1930s and reorganized in the 1950s.

Confronting a rural building and transforming it into a place of culture was the greatest challenge, even for the administration, which decided to transform the small pre-existing museum into a contemporary museum where, we hope, a piece of “healthy and honest rural architectural heritage” can be kept alive, which “will perhaps preserve us from academic repercussions and immunise us against pompous rhetoric and, above all, give us the pride of knowing the true indigenous tradition of Italian architecture: clear, logical, linear, morally and also formally very close to contemporary taste” (quoted from G. Pagano and G. Daniel).