Maria Skłodowska-Curie in Italy: Three Journeys, One Passion – open-air exhibition

26 06 2025

‘Maria Skłodowska-Curie in Italy: Three Journeys, One Passion’

Italy in the heart of Warsaw  in the esteemed company of our two-time Nobel Prize laureate.

From 4 July 2025, an open-air exhibition devoted to Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s travels in Italy will be on view at 66 Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. Entitled Maria Skłodowska-Curie in Italy: Three Journeys, One Passion, the exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the three visits made by our two-time Nobel Prize laureate to the Italian Peninsula in 1911, 1918 and 1931.

Although her visits to Italy are rarely mentioned even in the most recent biographies, they are of immense importance for understanding Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s life and work. The exhibition presents the Nobel laureate not only as a distinguished chemist, but also as a mother of two daughters, a friend, an active participant in the international scientific community, and a person deeply committed to the idea of collaboration across national borders. As a woman.

Thanks to archival research carried out over the past two years in Italy and France, it has been possible to reconstruct the details of these extraordinary journeys and to obtain previously unpublished materials. The exhibition presents not only historical facts but also conveys the atmosphere of the three trips, during which science and culture intertwined against the backdrop of the Italian landscape, creating a unique context for portraying one of the most influential figures in the history of global science.

Selected documents, photographs and quotations will be presented on 12 panels in both Polish and English. The exhibition will be on display this summer in Warsaw, at 66 Krakowskie Przedmieście, just next to the site where the future Nobel laureate conducted her first chemical experiments. This year, the exhibition will also be shown in Genoa, Pisa, and Rome.

We invite you on a journey through Italy following in the footsteps of Maria Skłodowska-Curie: to Liguria, Tuscany, Lazio, the islands of Ischia and Capri, as well as to the Veneto region and Piedmont.

The exhibition will be open until 17 August 2025.

Organisers:

The project was realised thanks to the cooperation between the Committee of Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), the PAN Scientific Centre in Rome, the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Warsaw (UW), the Polish Chemical Society (PTChem), and the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum in Warsaw. It was funded by the Polish Academy of Sciences under the “Otwarta Nauka” programme.

The exhibition enjoys the honorary patronage of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW), the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Rome, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Milan, the Embassy of Italy in Warsaw, the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), and the Musée Curie in Paris.