The exhibition "The Memory of Pain, a project of rebirth" promoted by the Extraordinary Commissioner for the recovery of the Santo Stefano-Ventotene prison, Silvia Costa, together with the National Museum of Rome at the Baths of Diocletian and the Ministry for Culture, intends to make known, through the vision of photographers with different sensibilities one of the most evocative places for our history: the former Bourbon prison of Santo Stefano, which is located on the islet overlooking the island of Ventotene "cradle of Europe". The former prison is now the subject of a government recovery project that in 2025 will give it back a new life, as a multifunctional cultural center and exhibition space dedicated to the memory of the prison, integrated with spaces that will host higher education events and initiatives in a European key and Mediterranean on the themes of human rights, cultural values and sustainable development.

The exhibition curated by Marco Delogu hosts together with his works those of Raffaella Mariniello and Mohamed Keita and intends to document through an artistic interpretation the drama of a place of pain abandoned for fifty years to decay.

The photographic narration is flanked by 8 short testimonies written by common and political prisoners who for 200 years lived within those walls, selected by the writer Pier Vittorio Buffa. To complete the narration, a video by director Salvatore Braca illustrating, through different voices, the history and future of the former prison recovery project, the involvement of citizens and the European perspective.