Audio-tactile experience for the little ones at the Bambin Gesù in Rome
Young patients from the Bambin Gesù Children's Hospital in Rome took part in visits, organised by the "Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums'. to experience through a multi-sensory experience, involving sight, touch and sound, the emotions that can arise from interacting with the masterpieces of art housed in the Vatican Museums.
The little ones, aged between 3 and 10, were accompanied by their parents and little brothers and sisters to spend a happy day together.
The aim of this initiative, born from the collaboration between the Vatican and the Roman hospital administered by the Holy See, is in fact to offer children, suffering from some form of disability, and in particular from some type of visual impairment, a moment of relief in their difficult journey through illness.
The activities proposed to the children involve forms of sensory stimulation: in fact, the children visiting in June physically interacted with the statues and busts in the Gregorian Profane Museum and took a ride on the 'magic carpet' - a mechanism that emits vibrations based on music - so that the children with hearing impairment could dance.
Insiders saw the children burst out laughing and clapping their hands when the sounds mimicked a kiss, the sound of a broken plate or even a... burp!
But what were these sounds supposed to evoke?
Shortly afterwards, the connection to the floor mosaic on which the children were resting their feet was revealed: the splendid 'Asàrotos òikos'.
This very special mosaic, made with minute tesserae also in glass paste and coloured enamel, adorned the floor of a triclinium in a villa of the Hadrianic age on the Aventine. The decorative theme is that of the asàrotos òikos, 'unswept floor', conceived in the 2nd century B.C. by Sosos of Pergamon and taken up in the mosaic by the artist Heraclitus, who inserted his signature.
The mosaicist has created a floor strewn with food remains, as it must have looked at the end of a lavish banquet: one recognises fruits, fish bones, chicken bones, molluscs, shells and even a mouse gnawing on a walnut shell.
The Bambin Gesù children's visits are part of the project sponsored by the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, Robyn & Kingsley Mundey and are organised by Dr. Isabella Salandri - Public Relations Officer of the Vatican Museums.
Dr. Carmelo Chines
Direttore responsabile
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