It is official. We have confirmation from Cupertino: with over 7.000 pieces, the biggest Apple museum [2] in the world is in Italy. It all started in a basement and today, while the world still cries for Steve Jobs’ death, it is waiting to change its home and relocate to the University of [3]Savona [3]. [3]

The precious collection, called “All About Apple,” is, at the moment, packed in cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked and set up but there still are some “bureaucratic affairs  and financial issues that need to be sorted out,” Alessio Ferraro, the IT tech who has founded the museum has said. What makes this collection unique is that all the machines, some dating back to the seventies, can be powered on and work perfectly.

It all started in 2002, with a few devices left behind after the closing of Briano Computer.  Ferraro was joined by William Ghisolfo and other friends in his new adventure. Then, in 2005 a phone call surprised the staff. Brett Murray, senior manager at Apple,  called to say he wanted to send them a “Welcome Package” from Apple Computers [4]. but that was not all, he even invited them all to go to California. It was Murray himself who told the guys theirs was the biggest Apple museum in the world.

With the passing of time and the increasing number of machines, the museum’s first home, the closed down lab of a middle school, started to be a bit too small.

That’s what brought the necessity of a better fit place, something definitely larger. The new space, at the Palazzo del Comando, in the University of Savona, should have opened in September but they are still waiting. Ferraro cannot hide being “worried as it is taking a long time.”

The museum’s staff hopes to start working by the end of the year and to inaugurate the new place in 2012. A date that, Ferraro fears, cannot really be met. A university campus would be the ideal home especially for incrementing IT research but “as things are right now, we have no certainties and we might have to find another situation.”

Meanwhile on the museum’s site there is a visual homage to Steve Jobs, a real inspiration for many, and even this Italian project.