Palazzo Ardinghelli was born of an earthquake and reopened after another, and this is not a quip: it is its biography.
It was built in the first half of the eighteenth century as one of the first historic buildings L’Aquila put back up after the earthquake of 1703, the one that had flattened the city. Then came 6 April 2009, and the palace ended up propped with steel beams, with a window blown out and its masonry exposed.
Today it is the L’Aquila site of the MAXXI, the national museum of twenty-first-century arts, and it reopened to the public on 30 May 2021. The restoration, carried out by the Ministry of Culture, was largely paid for by a donor nobody expects to find in Abruzzo: the Russian Federation.
Careful: the opening hours are the real obstacle, and they should be read before you book the trip. The museum opens only from Thursday to Sunday, from 11:00 to 19:00, and is closed Monday to Wednesday. In September 2026, moreover, it has extraordinary closures from the 7th to the 10th and from the 14th to the 24th.
What the palace looked like before
The photograph above is the quickest way to understand what we are talking about, and it should be looked at next to the one that opens this article, because it is the same building.
You can see the facade held in a cage of grey steel beams fitted at three levels, a blown-out window at the centre with the inner masonry laid bare, the cornice eaten away, the openings black and empty, and beneath the portal an orange site net. On the wall the council’s notice is still up.
This is the state in which Palazzo Ardinghelli remained for years, and the reason why in town the MAXXI is not regarded merely as a museum: it is the proof that a ruin of that kind can be brought back.
Who paid for the restoration, and why it is worth saying
After 2009 several states offered Italy contributions towards rebuilding the monuments of L’Aquila, and each one ended up on a different building. This palace received the contribution of the Russian Federation, amounting to 7.2 million euros; the works were carried out by the technical staff of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Why say it out loud? Because it is the kind of information museums tend to put on a small plaque, and which instead explains the geography of the L’Aquila reconstruction better than any speech: Collemaggio was paid for by Eni, the 99 spouts by the FAI, the wing of the castle housing the national museum by the state with forty million, and Palazzo Ardinghelli by Russia. Every monument in this city carries the name of whoever signed the cheque.
The project was presented on 28 May 2021 and the museum opened its doors to the public the following Sunday, 30 May.
How to look at Palazzo Ardinghelli
The palace is best looked at from the middle of the square, and there is only one thing to look for: the curve.
Above the portal, instead of a straight balcony, runs a balcony that curves in a serpentine, coming forward at the centre and receding at the sides, its parapets closed by panels of wrought-iron scrollwork. Beneath it, a pair of coupled columns on each side, and above the central window sits the family coat of arms in a shaped frame.
That curve is the signature of the late baroque, and at L’Aquila it comes from Rome: the internal monumental staircase is Borrominesque in inspiration, and the palace frescoes are the work of Vincenzo Damini, a painter from the Veneto.
Then there is something the museum has done that is worth more than a gallery: the inner courtyard runs right through the building and connects piazza Santa Maria Paganica to via Garibaldi. You can walk from one side to the other, and it is a public space. In a city that for years had no covered places to stop in, this passage is the most used part of the museum.
The window worth pausing for
If you have five minutes and one detail to look at, pick one of the windows on the main floor and stand underneath it.
The pediment is neither triangular nor semicircular: it is a double curve that lifts at the centre, breaks and comes back down, with the inner moulding repeating the movement on a smaller scale. Below, two fluted brackets like small pilasters frame the opening, and above the sill sits a little relief with three conical shapes.
The photograph catches the thing that makes this window photogenic: the sky reflected in the new glass. The frames are those of the restoration, and they declare it instead of imitating the old. It is the same logic as the modern glazing that closes the basilica of San Saturnino in Cagliari, or the ties on top of the castle bastions: when something is remade, you can see that it has been.
Notice the render, too, which is deliberately uneven and lets the patching show: this is not neglect: it is the decision not to bring the surface back to new.
What is inside: a museum that changes
One thing needs saying plainly here, and the museum’s own website does not put it on the front page: the MAXXI L’Aquila has no permanent collection to be visited the way you visit a picture gallery. It is an exhibition site of the MAXXI in Rome, with works that rotate, installations conceived for these rooms and a programme that changes two or three times a year.
What does that mean for a visitor? That the visit depends on the date. In a good month you find an international exhibition on the main floor; in a changeover month you find the palace, the courtyard and little else. Checking the programme before you leave is not generic advice: it is the difference between a full visit and half an hour.
There is also a reading room, open Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 19:00, for anyone wanting to consult the museum’s materials. In 2026 it is closed from 5 to 25 September.
The 2026 exhibitions, and the September gap
2026 is the year of Italian Capital of Culture, and the MAXXI L’Aquila has built the most ambitious programme of its short life. There are three items, and they should be read with the dates in hand.
Ai Weiwei, «Aftershock», curated by Tim Marlow, occupied the main floor with around seventy works from 28 April to 6 September 2026. It has closed: if you still find it advertised anywhere, out of date.
«Fabio Mauri. Gli anni dell’Aquila», curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini, opens on 26 September 2026 and runs until 24 January 2027. This is the one to wait for, and it has a precise local reason: Mauri, whose centenary falls in 2026, taught aesthetics of experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila from 1979 to 1999. He is not a name brought in from outside: he is a piece of the city’s own history.
«Convergenze e continuità. Architetture e paesaggi urbani in Abruzzo 1930-1960» has left the main site and is housed in the restored spaces of Palazzo Ex Omni, open since June 2026.
Between the two big exhibitions, though, there is a gap, and here lies the most concrete constraint in this whole article. Between 7 and 25 September 2026 the museum is closed almost continuously: from the 7th to the 10th and then from the 14th to the 24th, with the reading room closed from the 5th to the 25th. Anyone planning L’Aquila in those two weeks should count the MAXXI out and recalculate the itinerary.
Practical information
Details checked on 7 September 2026 on the official «hours and tickets» page of the MAXXI L’Aquila and on the Italian Capital of Culture 2026 programme. Hours, extraordinary closures and the exhibition calendar change: check again before you travel, and in this case check the extraordinary closures too, which here are not a rare exception.
Tickets. Full price is 10 euros. The reduced ticket costs 5 euros and applies to those aged 18 to under 25, to groups of ten or more and to holders of FAI, Amici di Palazzo Strozzi, Poste Italiane, CDP or BPER Banca cards. There is also an open ticket valid for a year at 12 euros, which only pays off if you come back.
Free entry. Under-18s, residents of L’Aquila, people with disabilities, students on European Union art and architecture courses and anyone visiting on their own birthday with proof of identity all enter free.
Opening hours. The museum opens Thursday to Sunday from 11:00 to 19:00 and stays closed Monday to Wednesday. The ticket office closes 45 minutes before the museum. The ordinary closing days are 1 May and 25 December.
Getting there. The address is piazza Santa Maria Paganica 15, in the heart of the old town, a few steps from the Fontana Luminosa and corso Vittorio Emanuele. Opposite the palace stands the church that gives the square its name. The inner courtyard links the square to via Garibaldi, so you can go in from two sides.
How long it takes. An hour when there is a big exhibition on the main floor. Half an hour in changeover periods, and in that case you go for the palace.
The phone number. The freephone number for tickets is 800266300, open every day from 10:00 to 19:00.
Why go in, and when not to
I will be honest, because it is more useful than praise: the MAXXI L’Aquila is not a museum to put at the top of the list if you only have one day. With one day you see Collemaggio, the castle with the national museum and the fountain of the 99 spouts, and that is the right programme.
With two days, go in, and for two reasons. The first is the palace, which is the best baroque L’Aquila has and which you can walk through free of charge in the courtyard. The second is that here the reconstruction produced something that did not exist before the earthquake: before 2009 this city had no museum of contemporary art, and now it has one, in a building that in 2010 was standing thanks to a set of beams.
The complete itinerary is in the guide on what to see in L’Aquila, and the basilica of San Bernardino is five minutes from here.
Photographs: the restored facade, the portal with the balcony and the propped palace by Lasacrasillaba (CC BY-SA 4.0), the baroque window by Verdenex84 (CC BY-SA 4.0), from Wikimedia Commons.
