Giuseppe Sacconi allocates the building’s support structures to the Museum of the Risorgimento
In the original project by Giuseppe Sacconi (1854-1905) the Vittoriano was to lean on the Capitol. However, already in the mid-eighties, the friable nature of the ground required the construction of impressive substructures in the intermediate levels, in order to make the building self-supporting. Thus a series of vast covered and connected spaces was created, which many people, starting with Sacconi himself, considered ideal for hosting museums
Watercolour/drawing of the outline of the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II by Giuseppe Sacconi
The idea of using the new, vast interior spaces of the Vittoriano to house the Museum of the Risorgimento can be said to have occurred around 1890. In a report dated 1891 we read that "the galleries for the Museum of the Risorgimento" were already covered and built: these "galleries" should be identified with the spaces now used for the Shrine of the Flags.
Album with watercolour-painted maps and elevations, containing the Outlines of ruins on the Capitoline Hill and its surroundings discovered during the excavations for the construction of the new Museum of the Risorgimento, Works Engineering Office, also known as the Civil Engineering Dept.
In the report drawn up in 1905, shortly before his death, Sacconi included three museums in the Vittoriano, the Museum of Crowns, the Museum of the Risorgimento, and the Museum of Flags. The first one was to be created on the ground floor, the second on the intermediate level, the third in the so-called "stylobate rooms", that is the gallery at the base of the Main Colonnade and the halls at the head of the Propylaea.
Giuseppe Sacconi e l'Opera sua Massima, by Primo Acciaresi, pub. 1911