On a recent weeknight, long after the swarms of tourists had left Rome’s Colosseum, a small group of people walked around outside the darkened amphitheatre, pausing every so often to take in a new aspect of its history, art or architecture with every sense but sight.
Michela Marcato, 54, has been blind since birth. She and her partially sighted partner were touring the site amid a new effort by Italy to make its myriad artistic treasures more accessible to people with blindness or low vision and enhance how all visitors experience and perceive art.
As she listened to her tour guide, Ms. Marcato traced her fingers over a small souvenir model of the Colosseum. She felt the grooves of its archways and rugged rubble of its crumbled side. What she hadn’t realized before holding it was the elliptical shape of building. “Walking around it, I personally would never have realized it. I would never have understood it,” she said. “But with that little model in your hand, it’s obvious!”
Handling a model Colosseum gave Michela Marcato a more tactile sense of what the Roman arena is like. She is fully blind; her partner, Massimiliano Naccarato, has partial vision.
Italy and its art-filled cities have no shortage of tourists, but they haven’t always been overly welcoming to visitors with disabilities. People who use wheelchairs often find elevators and doorways that are too narrow, stairs without ramps and uneven pavements.
But in 2021, as a condition of receiving European Union pandemic recovery funds, Italy accelerated its accessibility initiatives, dedicating more attention and resources to removing architectural barriers and making its tourist sites and sporting venues more accessible.
Pompeii recently installed a new system of signage to make the vast archeological site more accessible to blind and disabled people. The city of Florence produced a guide on accessibility options at the Uffizi Gallery and sites such as the Boboli Gardens, which because of their historic structures are not fully accessible.
An inclusive tourism model doesn’t just honour the human rights of people with disabilities; it also makes economic sense. Nearly half of the world’s population over the age of 60 has a disability, and disabled travellers tend to bring two or more companions, according to the World Tourism Organization.
A museum you can touch
Aldo and Daniela Grassini, both blind, were avid travellers and art collectors who grew increasingly frustrated that they weren’t allowed to touch art. In the early 1990s, they founded what is now Italy’s only publicly funded tactile museum. Museo Omero in Ancona, named for the blind poet Homer, features life-sized replicas of some of Italy’s most famous artworks.
Sight, Mr. Grassini says, is an “overbearing sense that tends to monopolize reality,” whereas touch offers a different dimension. “We love with our eyes and with our hands. If we are in love with a person or an object that is particularly dear to us, is it enough to just look at it? No, we need to caress it, because caressing gives you a different emotion,” he said.
One of the artists whose work is on display at the museum is Felice Tagliaferri, who himself is blind. At his studio on the outskirts of Cesena, he points to a marble bust he sculpted of his late friend Angela. Mr. Tagliaferri recalled that before Angela died of breast cancer, he lay down in bed with her, caressing her bald head. “When she passed away, Angela remained in my hands, and I recreated this sculpture thinking of her,” he said.
Ms. Marcato and her partner Mr. Naccarato each have their own ways of appreciating this seascape at their home.
A painting you can smell
Ms. Marcato, the woman who toured the Colosseum, and her partner Massimiliano Naccarato live in a smart apartment on Rome’s east side whose living room is dominated by a huge painting of the sea. Mr. Naccarato – who can see using his cellphone to enlarge images and with the help of special lights – purchased the painting to celebrate a professional award, and it has pride of place in their home. He installed a special light behind the work so he can see it better.
Ms. Marcato can’t see it at all, but she knows it’s there. For her, the painting recalls her love of the sea, “for the noise it makes, for the thousand different sounds it produces, for the smell you breathe in, for the walks you can take in any season.”
It is a sensory way of appreciating art that has absolutely nothing to do with seeing it.
A sculpture you can hear
‘Perhaps through touch you can also perceive different emotions that sometimes sight cannot give you,’ Stefania Terrè says. Hear more from her and the Omero museum’s founders about art without sight.
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