Tasked with revitalising a run-down area of San Giovanni in Persiceto, Gino Pellegrini has transformed Piazzetta Betlemme into an extraordinary experiment. Stroke by stroke, the artist’s ideas and the residents’ stories take shape on the walls of the humble houses.
In four successive projects in 1982, 1990, 1998 and 2004, Gino painted landscapes and figures – both real and imagined – creating a magical, dreamlike, timeless place for “children of all ages”. Using the trompe-l’oeil technique with great mastery, the artist reinvents an urban space as an illusion of reality. In a perfectly staged composition, reality and fiction interplay, presenting us with a surreal landscape of great charm. Now the final layer remains on the walls, that of 2004, when Gino added and modified elements and dreams materialised, bringing surreal animals and plants to life in a highly realistic rural setting, where the presence of humans can only be guessed at from small traces. Inside, traces of earlier versions – dedicated to the world of cinema – still emerge, such as the figures of Silvana Mangano and Cesare Zavattini, another great master who, like Gino, constantly straddled the line between reality and fantasy.
La Piazzetta is open to the public
A twenty-five-minute train journey from Bologna, eight kilometres from the Bologna-Modena motorway junction, on the Italian section of EuroVelo 7 for those arriving by bike.
San Giovanni in Persiceto station, Bologna–Verona line. Trains run every 30 minutes from Bologna Centrale; the journey takes 25 minutes.
A14 motorway, take the Borgo Panigale or Modena Nord exit, then the SS568. Free car parks near the city centre.
On the Ciclovia del Sole (EuroVelo 7), 25 kilometres from Bologna along the cycle path on the former railway line.
Save the attractions, plan your route, and follow the Cultural Metro lines.
