Omero State Tactile Museum: art to touch in Ancona

If you think of a museum, you picture eyes and a ‘do not touch’ sign. Here it’s the other way around. The Omero State Tactile Museum lives inside the Mole Vanvitelliana, the pentagonal building on the water in the port of Ancona, and invites you to explore art with your hands. It’s not a gimmick: it’s one of the few places in the world designed for the aesthetic education of blind and visually impaired people, yet truly open to everyone. As soon as you walk in, you realize that touch isn’t a fallback—it’s another way of knowing. The plaster casts, sculptures, architectural models, and design objects are there, within reach, with no display cases separating you. It’s an experience that feels a little disorienting at first and then draws you in. You find yourself ‘seeing’ the Venus de Milo or the Parthenon with your fingertips, and you discover details that the eye alone never tells.

The museum stems from an idea by Aldo Grassini and Daniela Bottegoni. Both are blind, and they envisioned a place where art can be touched. The impetus came in the early 1990s, and in 1993 the Municipality of Ancona established it, inspired by the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The decisive step was Law 452 of 25 November 1999, which made it a State Museum, with the mission of promoting the cultural integration of people with visual impairments. In 2012 it moved to the Mole Vanvitelliana, where it now occupies spaces on four levels. In 2021 the Design Collection was added, featuring 32 Made in Italy icons.

• 1993: established by the Municipality of Ancona
• 1999: recognized as a State Museum
• 2012: moved to the Mole Vanvitelliana
• 2021: Design section created

Here art can be leafed through like a book, but in three dimensions. The route brings together more than 200 works spanning every era: from copies of ancient Greece to masterpieces by Michelangelo and Canova, almost all life-size. You’ll find the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Discobolus, the Capitoline Wolf, and then architectural models of the Parthenon, the Pantheon, and St. Peter’s Basilica. The beauty of it is that you can trace the forms with your fingers, feel the volumes, the curves, the surfaces. Alongside the casts are more than 60 original sculptures from the 20th century and contemporary, signed by De Chirico, Marini, Martini, Messina, Pomodoro, Pistoletto, and others. It is not a dusty collection: it is a story that passes from the hands to the mind.

Since 2021, the museum has had a section that is worth the visit on its own: 32 iconic objects of Italian design, all winners or honourees of the Compasso d’Oro, from the 1960s to today. And yes, here too you can touch them. The Bialetti Moka, the Piaggio Vespa, the Louis Ghost chair, the Valentine typewriter: pieces you’ve seen a thousand times in photos and that here you discover in their true thickness, in their weight, in their surfaces. It is a section in a separate wing of the Mole and has a small entrance fee, but for anyone who loves well-made objects it’s a gem. You realise that design is made of details – a handle, a curve, a screw – that the eye often skips and that the hand registers immediately.

The museum is an example of how to break down barriers, both physical and cultural. The route is free of architectural barriers, wheelchairs are available, panels in black and Braille, and mobile platforms to explore the upper parts of the sculptures. Guide dogs are allowed. The Education Department organizes blindfolded guided tours and multisensory workshops for schools, families and groups, with a free art education service for blind and visually impaired people. There are also courses for teachers and a documentation center specializing in museum accessibility. The great thing is that all this is not reserved: even those with perfect sight take part and have fun. The museum publishes the magazine ‘Aisthesis’ and materials in Braille or audio.

Three concrete reasons. First: admission is free (only the Design Collection costs €5), so an experience like this won’t weigh on your budget. Second: it’s a museum truly for everyone — blind and visually impaired people, children, adults — and touching the works changes the way you remember them, even if you’ve seen a hundred museums. Third: the venue itself, the Mole Vanvitelliana, is already worth a visit: an 18th-century pentagonal building on the water designed by Luigi Vanvitelli as a lazaretto. And then there’s the educational side: workshops, blindfolded tours, activities that turn a walk into a game. If you’re looking for a museum that stays with you even afterward, this is the right one.