Lucca is getting a permanent home for comics. Italy’s Ministry of Culture, the Tuscany region and the city of Lucca have signed an agreement to create a new museum dedicated to comics, illustration, games, animation and interactive media, the ministry announced.
The museum’s permanent home will be the former Manifattura Tabacchi, Lucca’s old tobacco factory. Until that space is ready, activities will begin at Palazzo Guinigi, in rooms that already host Lucca Legacy – A Comics and Games Story, an exhibition on the history of the festival that runs until Sept. 30, 2027.
The agreement commits the three partners to setting up a Fondazione Expo Comics Museum by March 31, 2027, to run the museum. The institution is planned as both an exhibition space and a research center for collecting, cataloguing and preserving comics heritage, with education programs and partnerships with Italian and international universities and cultural institutions.
“Comics are an original language, born from the meeting of word and image, and fully belong to our artistic tradition,” Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said at the signing at Palazzo Guinigi. “They deserve to be studied, preserved, valued and handed down to future generations.”
Tuscany president Eugenio Giani said sixty years of history had made Lucca Comics & Games “the most important event in the world for this sector,” and that the heritage would now have a home “365 days a year,” according to Bleeding Cool. Lucca mayor Mario Pardini called the signing “a milestone for the entire community” after years of collaborative work.
Emanuele Vietina, director of Lucca Comics & Games and a member of the project’s technical scientific committee, said the festival’s legacy is taking “a leading role in the international cultural landscape.”
The timing is deliberate. Lucca Comics & Games is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and the museum is part of a wider program built around the festival’s legacy. The event began in 1965 in Bordighera before moving to Lucca the following year, and it has grown into one of the largest comics and games festivals in the world.
This year’s festival also handed out the Lucca Comics Awards, honoring books including Absolute Martian Manhunter and Feeding Ghosts.
