The Uncanny House Museum Casa di Goethe Rome Edited by Ilaria Marotta Andrea Baccin (Cura.) &
Gregor H. Lersch The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition The Uncanny House
March 28-September 01 2024 In the wake of the widespread leitmotiv that nourished literary
fantasy fairy tales horror stories and artistic creation alike since the early 19th century
The Uncanny House investigates the sense of unheimlich within the rooms of the Rome apartment
where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived between 1786 and 1788. It is a place that provides an
especially favored locus for uncanny disturbances: its apparent domesticity its residue of
nostalgia and its role as the last and most intimate shelter of private comfort are sharpened
by the contrast of empty spaces crevices chimeras ghosts alien spirits time shifts and
voices that creep in. Through the work of eighteen international artists the house thus
becomes a place where ambiguities obsessive thoughts and the neurotic dimensions of the human
sphere become apparent.
