Sasso Marconi: City of Communication. So says the welcome sign, upon entering the
suburb of Pontecchio Marconi, home of the Marconi Museum, dedicated to the birth and
development of radio communications. Villa Griffone, the renowned inventor’s family
home, is where Guglielmo spent much of his youth and carried out his first successful
experiments with the wireless telegraph. It was here in the so-called “silkworm room”
that Marconi began experimenting with electricity at about the age of 15, and finally
carried out his historic wireless communication experiment, successfully sending a
signal over Celestine Hill, which faces the villa, in 1895 when he was only 21. The
park also houses part of the relic of Marconi’s yacht, Elettra, which he purchased
after the war and adapted as a floating laboratory in which to carry out his experiments
in telephony, or the transmission of sound and voice by means of short and medium
waves. Adjacent to the villa is the mausoleum where the remains of Marconi and his
wife are held. Inside the museum are a number of functioning, accurate reconstructions
of scientific apparatuses of the 1800s located in a series of rooms, each dedicated
to one of the fundamental landmarks in the history of electricity. Alongside these,
the history of telecommunications in the 20th century is explained, with particular
emphasis on the evolution from telegraphs to radios to broadcasting. Today Villa Griffone
is under the management of the Marconi Foundation and, in addition to the museum,
is also home to two important radio communications research center.