On May 15, 2026, on the occasion of the 28th edition of Arte al Centro, Fondazione Pistoletto will inaugurate Hotel Cittadellarte: a new hospitality facility located within the Foundation’s complex, expanding its network of relationships between art, architecture, and society.

To fully understand this project, we begin with the process that generated it—through the words of Emanuele Bottigella, Head of the Architecture Department, who personally oversaw every phase of the redevelopment.

Making accessible what was no longer accessible

“The process began with an assessment of the existing conditions,” Bottigella explains. This was far from straightforward: the building appeared as a series of layers accumulated over the past fifty years, with areas that were inaccessible and, in some cases, structurally compromised.

As the architect recounts, before designing, it was necessary to empty, clean, and restore accessibility to the spaces. Only then was it possible to understand the building’s original structure and identify the materials and construction elements requiring intervention.

This work was accompanied by historical research in the archives, which made it possible to reconstruct the building’s transformations and correctly interpret the anomalies and discontinuities present in its structure.

“The work we carried out is both restoration and renovation,” Bottigella explains. “On one hand, the project involved recovering existing elements—such as lime plasters, metal railings, and stone surfaces—through cleaning, consolidation, and integration. On the other, it required significant structural interventions, including addressing seismic safety. The insertion of an internal frame made it possible to strengthen the building, improving its structural performance without altering its architectural identity.”

The project was developed in dialogue with the Heritage Authority, in a process that required great care and precision in managing materials and intervention techniques.

Materials and sustainability as design choices

On the building’s facade, the mural created by artist Matteo Raw (Raw Tella) introduces an immediately recognizable visual element.

The work unfolds around the building’s openings, forming a large elliptical shape composed of colored segments—red, yellow, blue, green, and orange—arranged in a modular sequence around the windows. The composition recalls the symbol of the Third Paradise by Michelangelo Pistoletto, reinterpreted through an urban and contemporary language.

The sign is built through the accumulation of individual elements, each different yet part of a shared figure: a visual structure that suggests an idea of relationship and coexistence among heterogeneous parts. In this sense, the mural makes visible—already from the outside—one of the project’s core principles: the possibility of connecting different elements within a single space.

The sign on the facade: the Third Paradise

Externally, the project finds a visual synthesis in the mural by Matteo Raw. The work draws inspiration from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Third Paradise symbol, reinterpreting it in an urban key. The sign, which brings different elements into a new balance, becomes an integral part of the building’s identity.

It is not merely decorative, but an element that makes explicit the project’s positioning: a place open to connections between different dimensions—art and life, individual and collective, private and public space.

Hospitality as a process

The theme of hospitality—at the heart of Arte al Centro 2026—runs through the entire redevelopment project. In Bottigella’s account, “to host” meant creating the conditions for a space to be inhabited, traversed, and shared. It meant intervening on a building to make it accessible again, defining which elements to preserve and which to transform, improving usability, and reducing the environmental impact of the adopted solutions.

Within this context, art becomes an integral part of the experience. The hotel rooms will host a site-specific, diffused exhibition by artist Giuseppe Stampone, curated by Ilaria Bernardi, conceived in direct relation to the inhabited space. Without anticipating its content, the project introduces a format in which the exhibition space coincides with the living space, opening up new forms of relationship between artwork and audience.

A new chapter for Cittadellarte

With the opening of Hotel Cittadellarte, the Foundation adds a new layer to its system: a place where staying becomes part of a broader cultural experience. A project that originates from a precise architectural process and develops as a space of relationships, where tourism becomes a tool to activate encounters, practices, and transformations.