Fast Car Passion

The Ferrari Company Museum is an essential part of every fan’s visit to Maranello. The visitor experience is a journey of discovery, exploring the Formula 1 and Sports-Prototype cars that have shaped Ferrari’s history. The cars themselves are the heart of the Museum, but it is also rich in objects that every fan dreams of seeing at first hand, and the images that have recorded every win, race after race, not to mention the astonishing reconstruction of Enzo Ferrari’s first office in Modena. Young visitors will love the Red Campus educational interactive workshop.

After leaving the Museum, it is fascinating to discover how much the whole Maranello area and also nearby Fiorano are steeped in the Ferrari myth. The magnificent 5-meter-tall Prancing Horse Monument stands on Via Grizzaga, to the rear of the Ferrari plant. Streets, parks, public places and businesses all carry names that evoke Ferrari’s history. The bronze Monument to Enzo Ferrari on Maranello’s central piazza Libertà commemorates the main milestones in the life of the “Drake”, as he was known, while a 575 Maranello car is amazingly but permanently on show… in the entrance to the Town Hall!

While it is an everyday occurrence to see Ferrari cars on the roads of Maranello, nearby Fiorano is home to a test and experimentation circuit for Ferrari racing and GT cars. There is no public access (except on the shuttle bus during the factory tour already mentioned), but the roar of the engines being tested is uniquely thrilling. The monument to Gilles Villeneuve, the great driver who tragically lost his life in 1982, stands on the road that leads to the Fiorano Circuit. Fiorano’s homage to Enzo Ferrari, on the other hand, is reflected in the Contemporary Collection of the Ceramics Museum housed in Spezzano Castle, which contains works dedicated to the “Drake” and his iconic status by designers and artists, including famous international names, and by potters and decorators from various Italian ceramic traditions.

The Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari, in Modena, about twenty km from Maranello, is open to visitors. It was created by restoring the house where Enzo Ferrari was born in 1898, and by constructing a new building by architect Jan Kaplicky, with automotive-inspired design, alongside it. In the birthplace, a multimedia visitor experience retraces the key events in Enzo Ferrari’s life, while the new building contains a display of dream cars that recount Modena’s motorsports history.