Galeotta was the Circumvesuviana. Because on the train that connects Naples with the inland towns, Pina Verdoliva and Massimo Pamio they met, over 30 years ago. She, a beautiful girl from Pompeii, surrounded by a soft cloud of red hair; he, a young man from Abruzzo, with many ideals and a passion for art. “Since then, we have never left each other,” says Pina. «From our love lived kilometers away, very sweet letters were born». The first sheets on which, years later, he would base himself the Love Letter Museumthe first and only of its kind in the world. Which, today, has over 25 thousand letters, arriving from all over the world.
Massimo Pamio and Tina Verdoliva are the creators of the museum.
We are at Torrevecchia Teatinajust over 4 thousand inhabitants on the hills that surround the city of Chieti, in Abruzzo. The museum was born in the rooms of the beautiful Palazzo Valignani; 26 years ago now, Pina and Massimo decided to establish an award dedicated to the Love Letter. At the first edition, over a thousand letters arrived from all continents. To preserve them, on 9 August 2011, the Torrevecchia Museum was born, a bit by adventure, a bit as a joke, a lot out of love. It is directed by Massimo Pamio and his wife Pina, aided by Vittorio Esposito, 90 years old, a “voluntary caretaker”, as he calls himself.
Other letters from private individuals preserved in the Love Letter Museum.
Over the years, the Prize letters have been accompanied by correspondence donated by private individualsbut also letters purchased from antique dealers: the oldest is from two Neapolitan nobles from the 1700s and, today, the collection exhibited at the museum includes not only letters, but also photographs, small objects, stamps… Furthermore, since 16 October 2012, the exhibition space has been enriched with two new rooms dedicated to the letters addressed to John Paul IIthousands of testimonies deposited in St. Peter’s Square in the hours of the agony and death of the holy Polish Pope, in April 2005, written in different languages by children, teenagers and adults. Among these, the letter of a person detained for organized crime, who wrote to the Pope that he had converted and, for this reason, repented.
One of the numerous letters written to John Paul II and kept in the “divine love” room.
In addition to the “divine love” room, with the letters to John Paul II, there is the “aerial love” roomin which the lyrics descend from above, as if they were a rain of words. Another room is instead reserved for the theme of correspondence between lovers forced to separate during the years of emigration to America. By analyzing the vicissitudes of the authors of the letters, the most beautiful love story in Italy was also decreed: it is the one between Guido Aula and Maria Antonietta Genuarditwo nobles of Sicilian origin, married on 14 February 1944 in the midst of the World War, who wrote over 600 letters to each other from 1941 to 1987. Widowed at a very late age, Marie Antoinette was defined as the apostle of love because she spoke about marital union in schools and had undertaken a spiritual epistolary correspondence with Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer: he was the founder of the Opus Gods to send some of those letters to Pope Paul VI who, six months later, promulgated the encyclical Humanae vitae, which also talks about the relationship and affection between spouses. «It’s nice to think», comments Pamio, «that Paul VI’s encyclical was inspired by a love letter».
INFORMATION
Anyone can donate their family’s love letters, they will be treasured forever. Info on cell. 327.99.60.722; museolettera@gmail.com; www.museoletterad’amore.it
