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Venue

From July 2026, the Italian Cultural Institute in London has a new home. Italy House, inaugurated in October 2025, houses the Embassy of Italy, the Italian Cultural Institute and the Italian Trade Agency. It is located near Buckingham Palace, in the political and institutional heart of the United Kingdom.

Italy House brings together all the components of Sistema Italia. It is a showcase for Italy, bringing together its economic, cultural, artistic and social dimensions under one roof. It is the result of a collaborative effort between the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of Italy, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Italian Trade Agency, leading Italian design and furniture companies, and Italian and British museums. It is a space that is open to everyone: institutional representatives, entrepreneurs, citizens, students, academics, scientists, athletes, journalists, and representatives of the arts and cultural sectors.

Numerous Italian companies contributed to the design, including Molteni&C, Unifor, Cassina, Tecno, Poltrona Frau, Porro, De Padova, Saporiti Italia, Citterio, Alias, Rubelli, Flos, Alpi, Listone Giordano, Marsotto, Glas Italia, Olivari, Karakter, Acerbis, Tacchini, Azucena, Giobagnara, CC-Tapis and Robertosport. The coffee areas are fitted out with equipment by two iconic Italian brands, Lavazza and Smeg. The lighting and integrated technology solutions are designed by Flos Architectural, Formafantasma, Unifor, Citterio, Tecno. The audio equipment is by K-Array. The materials and finishings – including Marsotto travertine, natural woods Rubelli textiles and Alpi surfaces – reflect continuity between artisinal tradition and contemporary creativity. In the lobby, a mosaic designed by Formafantasma and made by Fantini Mosaici gives a modern interpretation to this this traditional Italian decorative artform.

The art collection includes works from both public and private collections, with particular attention to dialogue betwee modern and contemporary styles. In the Main Hall a set of works by Paolo Scheggi from the Inter-ena-cubo series (1967-1969) is displayed. In the waiting room and the offices are three works by Pietro Consagra (Controluce, 1998) and a selection of works by Arturo Vermi, including Presenza (1965) and Diario 1 (1986), as well as two works by Tino Stefanoni (Le penne – 16B, 1972; Le borse di gomma – 72B, 1973). In the Giuseppe Verdi room Gianpaolo Pagni‘s Grande Storia dell’arte italiana (nn. 1–4, 2025) is displayed. The Eugenio Montale Library hosts a tapestry carpet from Superficie 480 (1967) by Giuseppe Capogrossi and the installation Emerging Forms (2025). On the first floor is Color and Light (2024) by Michelangelo Pistoletto, as well as works by Riccardo Paternò Castello (Milano, 2012), Tancredi di Carcaci (EBITDA, 2025) and Antony Gormley (Receive II, 2017), as well as Spider Maximus (2020) by Achille Salvagni. There are also loans from the Estorick Collection, with pieces by Zoran Mušič, Mario Sironi and Massimo Campigli, and a set of archeological finds provided by the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum: funerary urns in travertine, kylikes and amphoras with black figures (Collezione Castellani), an Etruscan vase with a lidded bowl, a loutrophorous, a bronze basin, votive heads, and a polychrome antefix.

Insights

  • Before the opening of the strategical venue of Italy house, the Italian Cultural Institute was located at 39 Belgrave Square. Belgrave Square, the centrepiece of late Georgian London’s smartest and most fashionable development, was laid out from 1825 onwards by a consortium of Swiss born bankers (one of whom was a Governor of the Bank of England), the builder Thomas Cubitt and the architect George Basevi.

    From the beginning, tenants from the very highest social order were sought and no expense was spared in wooing them either in the layout of the square (which covers 10 acres) or in the construction of the flanking terraces. The north and east sides were built first, followed later by the slightly more exuberant west and south sides, once it became clear that the new square would prove financially rewarding to the ground landlord, Earl Grosvenor (later the 1st Marquess of Westminster) whose family still retains the freehold. The square takes its name from one of the Earl’s subsidiary titles, which in turn derives from a small village in Leicestershire. 175 years on, all four terraces remain as built, so that the square continues to look much as it did as when it was first completed back in the late 1830s.

    The houses are large and stuccoed, with four storeys and with just enough variation in window shapes, porch detailing and attic treatment to avoid the charge of monotony. (The slightly larger houses at the four corners, by different architects, also differ, but because of the size of the square can never be seen together at the same time).

    With minor exceptions, the internal room arrangements and decorations are much the same from one house to another, making No. 39 a representative example of its type. It has a large single first floor room for entertaining, a grand entrance hall and staircase for receiving guests, and ample space above and below for the required army of servants.

    In the Victorian period the house was the town house of the Earl of Albermarle. Like most of the others in the square (now occupied by Embassies, cultural institutions or professional societies) its use as a private residence ended about the time of the Second World War.
    Basevi, the house’s architect, was a highly competent late Georgian designer, trained in the office of Sir John Soane and best remembered today for being Disraeli’s cousin and the designer of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He met his death falling from the tower of Ely Cathedral in 1845. Belgrave Square was one of his very first commissions.