Dompé and L’Aquila: over thirty years of history, research and innovation
The exhibition promoted by Fondazione Dompé tells the story of the bond between the company and the L’Aquila area, within an industrial history that began more than 130 years ago in Milan.
Over thirty years of presence in L’Aquila within an industrial history that began more than 130 years ago in Milan. This is the common thread of “Dompé in L’Aquila. From Italy to the world”, the exhibition promoted by Fondazione Dompé at Palazzo dell’Emiciclo (from September 29 to October 2, 2026), in the year in which L’Aquila is the Italian Capital of Culture.
At the opening, the Mayor of L’Aquila, Pierluigi Biondi, and the President of the Regional Council of Abruzzo, Lorenzo Sospiri, visited the exhibition together with Sergio Dompé, President of the Dompé Foundation and Executive Chairman of Dompé Farmaceutici, retracing a history that has bound the company to the city and the Abruzzo region since 1993.
Photographs, documents from the Historical Archive of the Dompé Foundation and multimedia content describe a journey that starts from the Farmacia Centrale in Piazza della Scala, in Milan, and spans over a century of transformations in the Italian Pharmaceutical industry, up to the creation and development of the Campo di Pile’s hub.
It is right in L’Aquila that an important part of this story gains an international dimension. Inaugurated in 1993, L’Aquila hub has become over time a production and research center, supporting the growth of the company and promoting the decision to invest in biotechnology. Today, a drug bas ed on Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) is produced here too, the protein whose discovery earned Rita Levi Montalcini and Stanley Cohen the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1986.
“Dompé Farmaceutici was founded in Milan, but it was in L’Aquila that it developed a major part of its business. Here we’ve found highly skilled people who knew how to put heart and passion into a project that allowed us to enter global markets. This motivation is at the heart of an exhibition that tells a story drawing its strength precisely from the bond with the L’Aquila community,” stated Sergio Dompé.
The exhibition is also the result of the archival preservation and curation work undertaken by the Historical Archive of Fondazione Dompé .Among the materials on display, alongside testimonies of the company's industrial history, are the campaigns and covers created by Franco Grignani, as well as a significant link with Abruzzo that predates Dompé’s arrival in L’Aquila by many years: a reportage dedicated to the city and the region by Abruzzese writer Giovanni Titta Rosa, published in 1949 in the corporate magazine Bellezza d’Italia.
In the year of L’Aquila Capitale Italiana della Cultura, bringing these documents back to light also means giving back to the city a part of its industrial and scientific history.
