The Simonino Room, previously known as the Simonino Chapel, located inside Palazzo Bortolazzi Larcher Fogazzaro on Via del Simonino in the historic centre of Trento, was donated to FAI by Marina Larcher Fogazzaro in 2018 to be restored and enhanced.

After the initial restoration work, which first focused on the facade of the Palazzo, revealing its 15th-century windows and restoring colour and clarity to the 18th-century painted figures and inscriptions, the Foundation reorganized the interior space to create a new and original cultural enhancement project. This project consists of a “sound narrative” dedicated to the storey of the young Simon of Trento. Visitors, seated on wooden benches reminiscent of a choir's pews, will listen through wireless headphones, designed to offer high-quality audio, to a 20-minute narrative.

Here, where his birthplace once stood – as indicated by the inscription on the facade – there was the “Simonino Chapel” in the 18th century, and likely even earlier. This referred to Simone Lomferdorm, a boy just over two years old, found dead on March 24, 1475, in the moat of a house along the Adige River owned by a Jew. Simon became the central figure, against his will, in an unbelievable storey of antisemitism, religious intolerance, and injustice, which deserves to be remembered and recounted.

At that time, the city authorities, fuelled by a long-standing hateful anti-Jewish prejudice, promoted the false belief in ritual murder, accusing the Jews of having killed the boy to use his blood in their Passover rites. Thus, Simon immediately became a Christian martyr and was later officially beatified, becoming the popular subject of an extensive cult with dedicated places of worship, annual processions, and a collection of sacred images spread across Italy. Meanwhile, the small Jewish community in Trento was unjustly accused, tried, condemned, persecuted, and finally expelled from Trento, where they did not return for five hundred years. Only in 1965, following a scientific review of the trial that overturned the guilty verdict against the Jews, was the cult of Simonino suppressed by a papal decree, ordering the removal of the boy's remains from the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, the cessation of all celebrations, and the closure of the chapels, including this one donated to FAI. It was not until 1992 that the Jewish community officially returned to Trento, as commemorated by a plaque placed by the city.

Since 1965, this has no longer been a place of worship, but it remains a place of great cultural significance: not only for its architecture and decoration but above all because it bears witness to a dark chapter of our past. For this very reason, it must be preserved and shared, to pass down the memory of what was and must never be again.