Brixia Light Box

The ground under Palazzo Martinengo Cesaresco, built in Brescia in 1663 at the junction between the decumanus of the ancient Roman town (modern via Musei) and the forum (Piazza del Foro), bears witness - thanks to the site's complex occupation history - to the passage of nearly three thousand years. Here the archaeological stratigraphy offers visitors an unusual vertical sequence of past events: the remains of medieval and Roman buildings and the older pre-Roman villages are arranged vertically, on beneath the other, down to a depth of 7m below the present-day surface of Piazza del Foro.

In the building's large cellar, situated right next to where the forum was, a spacious room has been brought to light. It was probably a shop (taberna), with brick-built walls and floor paved with marble slabs.

Here a full-immersion multimedia experience has benn installed- an initiative motivated by the International Year of Light and promoted by the Brescia Provincial Authority, together with the Lombardy Archaeological Superintendency, which uses cutting-edge technology to enhance the understanding and experience of visitors to the archaeological site.

By projecting images into the wall surface, this full-immersion multimedia experience creates a virtual breach in the room's boundaries, as though a magical door had been opened, enveloping the viewer in the ancient building and its surroundings as they were during the Roman Empire. The walls seem to dissolve and the forum - easy to imagine just beyond the monumental construction that contains several architectural components of its porticoes, mounted in a remarkable collage during the Lombard epoch - comes back to life.