Gallery-goers in Milan will be able to experience the sensation of entering a legal Italian brothel for the first time in 50 years thanks to a new exhibition opening in the city on Friday.
The risque' show at the Crazy Art gallery includes the faithful reconstruction of both a lower-class and a high-end brothel, with original furnishings and decorations including lists of prices for the various services offered by girls hung on the walls.
''We decided to hold this exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the Merlin Law,'' said curator Giancarlo Ramponi, referring to the law named after its sponsor, the late Socialist senator Angelina Merlin, which officially closed down Italy's brothels in 1958.
''We held a similar show around 25 years ago, but it was rather basic. Since then we have amassed many other objects and the exhibition is more complete''.
Ramponi and his wife, Rosella, have been collecting brothel memorabilia for over 30 years and have acquired many beds, gilt-edged sofas and other period trappings from when the houses were closed down.
Among the dimly lit objects on show are a collection of drawers, stockings and corsets, an erotic kneeling stool and a mechanical red lamp containing the models of five small ballerinas who danced when all the brothel's rooms were occupied.
There are also original 'catalogues' showing pictures of the girls, from which clients used to pick their favourite.
One of the rarest brothel artefacts on display is a 'ciuladura', a special type of armchair for elderly clients, Ramponi said.
The reproduction waiting room of the lower-class brothel includes an original spitoon accompanied by a notice explaining that it is forbidden for clients to spit on the floor.
There is also a reconstruction of a so-called voyeur's room, where clients could pay to watch the prostitutes at work from behind a secret mirror.
The show, entitled 'Mi piace un casino' (a play on words meaning both 'I like a brothel' and, in modern slang, I like it a lot') runs at the Crazy Art Gallery from September 18 to December 31.
Earlier this year right-wing politicians Daniela Santanche' decided to promote a popular referendum to overturn the Merlin Law and reopen the brothels in an effort to clean up the streets, and a June poll by women's weekly Donna Moderna showed that some 85% of Italians are in favour of the idea.
But last week Santanche' took a step back after Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna presented a bill that will ban street prostitution, hitting both sex workers and clients with fines ranging from 200 to 3,000 euros and jail terms of between five and 15 days.
Some critics of the bill have said that it is tantamount to opening unregulated brothels since the sex trade will be forced off the streets and into private houses.
Carfagna on Thursday repeated that ''people in their own homes can do what they want'', but that it would be ''unthinkable for the government of a Catholic country'' to support the legalisation of brothels.
Currently, only the exploitation of prostitution - pimping - is illegal in Italy, but city mayors can levy fines of up to 500 euros for both streetwalkers and their clients.
