From Villa Griffone to Cape Cod, the world tunes in on April 25th.
April 25th is Marconi Day—the birthday of Guglielmo Marconi, born in Bologna in 1874. The date has long served as a moment for institutions, museums, and foundations around the world to revisit the places where his work continues to echo. This year, as the Marconi.150 National Committee’s three-year program winds toward its close, the celebrations feel especially resonant.
At Villa Griffone: A Nobel Conversation on Marconi’s Legacy
On April 25th, at the Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi at Villa Griffone — the house in Pontecchio Marconi where a young Guglielmo Marconi conducted his earliest experiments — Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi President Giulia Fortunato will host a conversation between Canadian Nobel Prize Laureate Arthur B. McDonald (Physics, 2015) and Antonio Zoccoli, President of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). Marking the 125th anniversary of Marconi’s first wireless signal between Cornwall and Canada, the two scientists will discuss some aspects of the international research conducted at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories, including dark matter and astroparticle physics.
Villa Griffone is more than an address. It is the place where, in the summer of 1895, a young Marconi stood on one side of a hill and, with a homemade transmitter, sent a signal over the crest to his brother Alfonso, who fired a rifle shot to confirm receipt. That quiet miracle launched a century of wireless communication. Today the estate houses the Museo Marconi and the Fondazione that bears his name.
The Road to April 25: Marconi.150 and the Halifax Bridge
The Villa Griffone event is the culmination of a three-year program run by the National Committee for the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Guglielmo Marconi, established by the Italian Ministry of Culture under Decree 397 of December 13, 2023. The Marconi.150 National Committee has convened institutions, scientists, schools, and enthusiasts across Italy and abroad for the period 2024–2026.
One of the program’s most symbolic moments came on March 11, 2026, when the National Committee, the Italian Embassy in Canada, and Dalhousie University presented a conference titled “Evolution of Communication: From Guglielmo Marconi to Agentic Artificial Intelligence” at Dalhousie’s Tupper Building. The event coincided with the Canadian port call of the Italian Navy’s frigate Nave Alpino and with the 125th anniversary of Marconi’s first transatlantic signal.
Giulia Fortunato delivered the keynote, “Bridging Continents: Guglielmo Marconi and the First Wireless Transatlantic Connection,” and a panel exhibition titled “Guglielmo Marconi and the Italian Navy,” produced with the Navy’s Historical Office, accompanied the conference. The day closed with a reception aboard Nave Alpino: from the frigate, three Morse dots — the letter S — were transmitted by radio to the Italian Navy’s headquarters outside Rome, echoing the same letter S that Marconi and his assistant George Kemp received off the coast of Newfoundland in December 1901.
Around the World: Where to Find Marconi
Marconi Day is also an invitation to visit the places that hold his legacy. A short, incomplete tour:
Italy — Pontecchio Marconi
Beyond Villa Griffone and the Museo Marconi, visitors can pay their respects at the Marconi Mausoleum on the grounds, and explore the inventor’s laboratories, instruments, and correspondence on a curated tour.
United Kingdom — Cornwall and Oxford
PK Porthcurno: Museum of Global Communications sits in the former cable station in Cornwall, where many of the world’s transatlantic submarine telegraph cables once came ashore. Marconi’s own wireless operation at Poldhu lies only a short distance away, and the two sites are often visited together as companion chapters in the story of long-distance communication.
At the University of Oxford, the Bodleian Libraries hold the Marconi Archives, given to the University in 2004 by Marconi plc and the Marconi Corporation plc. The collection runs from approximately 1850 to 2004 and includes not only Marconi’s personal and corporate papers but the archives of more than thirty associated companies — from the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Ltd. to Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, the Marconi International Marine Communication Company Limited, M-O Valve, English Electric, Ferranti, Plessey, GEC, and many others. Together these records represent one of the world’s most comprehensive documentations of the industry Marconi set in motion.
United States — Cape Cod
On the Atlantic shore in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, the Marconi Wireless Station Site at Cape Cod National Seashore marks the spot where, on January 18, 1903, the first public two-way wireless communication was exchanged between U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and a European monarch, King Edward VII. The National Park Service preserves the site with an overlook, a scale model, and a bronze bust of Marconi.
About ninety minutes from Boston, the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center houses one of the most thoughtfully curated museum experiences on this list. Original antenna installations cover the surrounding hillsides, and volunteers lead guided tours of operational equipment in the historic station buildings.
United States — Point Reyes and Bolinas, California
On the Pacific coast, Marconi’s ambition reached toward Hawaii. In 1913–14 he commissioned a transmitting station west of Bolinas and a receiving station at Marshall on Tomales Bay; in 1914 they carried the first wireless transmission across the Pacific. The Marshall receiving station is now the centerpiece of Marconi State Historic Park, recently expanded and operated by California State Parks. Nearby, at Point Reyes National Seashore, the historic KPH Maritime Radio Receiving Station and the Bolinas transmitter, restored and maintained by the Maritime Radio Historical Society, still broadcast on Marconi Day and other amateur radio events.
New Jersey — A Video Tribute
The New Jersey Hall of Fame’s tribute to Marconi remains one of the most accessible short introductions to his story, and a reminder of how widely his name is still honored beyond the world of radio.
A Shared Birthday
Every one of these sites, Villa Griffone, Porthcurno, Oxford, South Wellfleet, Point Reyes, Bolinas, is an anchor point in a network that Marconi himself imagined as continuous and global. Taken together, they form something close to a living biography: the hillside where he first proved a signal could cross a horizon; the coastlines where he pulled the Atlantic and then Pacific into the same conversation; the archives that hold the paperwork of an industry he set in motion. On April 25th, the foundations, museums, and universities that care for those places mark the day in their own way.
From the Marconi Society, warm greetings to our sister organization Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi and to all those keeping his legacy alive this week.
