The exhibition “The legacy of Charlemagne 814-2014” is the last venue of a series of exhibitions realized within the framework of the CEC project, a EU funded project whose Italian partner was IBC – Istituto Beni Culturali of Emilia-Romagna Region.
The exhibition wants to explain to the public how culture played an essential role in European history, in both a positive as well as in a negative way.
In a negative way whenever culture and the cultural past are used as political means of power to legitimize ambitions and the drive to conquer. In a positive way when culture, in all its singularity and diversity, brings people together and unites them. This double use of culture is an integral part of the legacy of Charlemagne and even today it still plays an important role.
IBC took care of two sections of the exhibition, one about "Renovatio imperii", the attraction toward the idea of a universal empire that feeds on ancient materials in order to build new traditions, an idea that regained its central role thanks to Charlemagne and the Ottonian emperors and would therefore seem to be timeless.
The other one, the section “Use and Abuse of History”, wants to highlight how cultural heritage demonstrates its inextinguishable ambiguity when an attempt is made to use it as a fil rouge of a supposed ‘European’ culture, after having been exploited as an instrumentum regni of nationalisms of every kind.
The exhibit received the Slovakian award "Pamiatky a muzea - Heritage and museums".