Here’s a name you don’t usually see paired with Vercelli: Marc Chagall. And yet, from October 13, 2026 to March 29, 2027, this quiet Piedmontese city — better known for its rice paddies than its blockbuster art shows — is about to host one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the season. Fifty original works by one of the most recognizable painters of the 20th century, installed inside a deconsecrated church. If that combination doesn’t already have you intrigued, keep reading.
Why Vercelli, of All Places
The exhibition lands at Spazio ARCA, housed in the striking former Church of San Marco — already a stunning venue on its own, and now the second chapter of an ambitious multi-year plan to put Vercelli on Italy’s cultural map. (In 2025, ARCA hosted a major show on Italian Expressionism; Chagall is the natural next step up.) The project is promoted by the City of Vercelli and produced by Arthemisia, in collaboration with the Fondazione Giuseppe Iannaccone in Milan — the same names behind some of Italy’s biggest touring exhibitions in recent years.
What the Show Is Really About
This isn’t a greatest-hits wall of colorful lovers floating over rooftops (although, don’t worry, there’s plenty of that too). The curatorial thread running through the exhibition is loss of homeland — a theme Chagall knew intimately. Born in Vitebsk (Belarus) in 1887, he was forced to leave his native city for good in 1922, and watched it get wiped off the map when German forces destroyed it during World War II in 1941.
Rather than framing him as simply “the painter of nostalgia,” the exhibition presents Chagall as something more urgent: an artist who turned exile into a universal visual language, and whose reflections on memory and uprooting feel unsettlingly relevant today. Expect to move through the recurring obsessions of his career — love, religion, animals, dreams, poetry — while a series of self-portraits scattered throughout the rooms act almost like a personal guide, Chagall walking you through his own life.
A dedicated section, curated by Daniele Fenaroli, adds another layer: works by Italian artists who were contemporaries of Chagall, drawn from the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, placing his visual language in dialogue with 20th-century Italian sensibility.
The Practical Bits
- Exhibition: Marc Chagall
- Dates: October 13, 2026 – March 29, 2027
- Venue: Spazio ARCA, former Church of San Marco, Vercelli
- Works on display: around 50 original pieces
- Organized by: City of Vercelli, produced by Arthemisia, in collaboration with Fondazione Giuseppe Iannaccone
Tickets are already on sale — worth booking ahead, since this is the kind of show that tends to fill up fast once word gets around.
Make It a Piedmont Day Trip
Here’s a little insider logistics tip: Vercelli sits less than an hour from Turin by train, right in the middle of Piedmont’s famous rice country. If you’re planning a base in Turin anyway — and if you’ve got my Turin guide (now also available as an audio guide) queued up for your trip — this is an easy, richly rewarding day trip to slot in between city days. Rice fields on the way out, Chagall’s exiled dreamworld on arrival.
A nice, original way to spend an afternoon.
