Museo Nazionale del Fumetto - Located in the historic downtown district in the quiet Piazza San Romano, next to the city walls between the Fortresses of Santa Maria and San Paolino is the MUF, or the Museo Nazionale del Fumetto e dell`immagine (National Comics and Illustrations Museum), realized on the basis of a cultural project by Gianni Bono, housed in the city complex that was once the Lorenzini barracks, now fully restored by Architect Pietro Carlo Pellegrini. In addition, some of the Museum`s temporary displays are held in the adjacent Church of San Romano, now a community auditorium.

The MUF is a unique place, not just the permanent home of the heroes of our youth, but also a piece of the mosaic that forms part of Lucca "city of comics", dedicated to families and especially to new generations to guide them in discovering thousands of potential ways to express themselves through this fantastic medium, which of course must be passed on and treasured evermore.

The main entrance to the Museum leads from Piazza San Romano into a wide rectangular courtyard. On the left are rooms that hold precious original designs and publications of cartoons dating from the end of the Nineteenth Century up to the 1980s. The "interactive" rooms open to the right, with guided tours through the history of cartoons and their heroes.

The exhibition rooms are made in original structures of glass and steel. framed by the ancient shells of what once were Bourbon stables, forming enormous transparent boxes that throb with suggestive plays of light, populated with cartoons and their most representative characters in an uninterrupted exchange between old and modern, between the grandness of the location and the fun of their contents.

The Luciano and Federico Pedrocchi Room (writers of the first science fiction comics), the Sergio Tofano Room (author of Signor Bonaventura), the Gian Luigi Bonelli Room (the "father" of Tex Willer), the Angela and Luciana Giussani Room (inventors of the "black" comics with Diabolik) and the Andrea Pazienza Room (where Zanardi is found), take the visitor on a journey between posters, announcement boards and newspapers that encompass most of the comics of the 20th Century.

The rooms and areas of the right wing on the other hand offer more of an "immersion", and a direct approach to the colorful atmosphere of cartoons. The "Travel in the `900s" transports the visitor into a "cartoon land" through set design and props for some of the world`s most beloved protagonists and characters: from Topolino to Valentina, from Superman to Dylan Dog.

Lupo Alberto on the other hand offers a presentation on "Cartoon Art", giving a step-by-step explanation from the birth of a cartoon through its publication, from the idea to the printed story.

However it is in the space of "Giocare con le nuvole" ("Playing with Clouds") that the "expo-entertainment" philosophy of the Museum takes its most definitive form. In the Mondo della Pimpa ("World of Pimpa") and the Art Attack Lab children can take part in guided activities that open to them a world of illusion and creativeness.

Not to mention the world of Disney, which leads the visitor into a magic world populated by famous "ducks" and "mice".

An articulated tour with the possibility of expressing oneself as a protagonist in the priceless experience of learning through "doing". ... from "Lucca" (Apt Lucca)