News and events from around the world this month

Having survived the pandemic, the city of Cremona is embracing new technology in its efforts to bring its violin making heritage to the world

By Peter Somerford

Read all the breaking news in the string world online www.thestrad.com

Access for all

The grand opening of the Casa Stradivari on 4 July

YUMA MURATA

The Italian city of Cremona is increasingly finding different ways of making its violin making heritage relevant and tangible to diverse audiences. Visitors to the Museo del Violino (MdV), which opened ten years ago this month, can now browse digitised archives, catalogues and other documents in a new consultation room. In the same space they can also feel the archings on a 3D-printed replica of Stradivari’s ‘Stauffer, ex-Cristiani’ cello of 1700, which is the nearest they will get to touching one of the precious Cremonese instruments in the museum’s so-called Treasure Room. Half a mile across the city, at Corso Garibaldi 57, the house where Stradivari lived and worked from 1667 to 1680 has been restored from a derelict state and is now open to the public for guided tours. No mere relic, the Casa Stradivari is instead a cultural centre housing a workshop for apprentice violin makers, rooms for acoustic analysis and varnish research, a space for concerts, exhibitions and instrumental training, and a studio apartment for an artist-in-residence.