the first European festival on creativity

2016 Programme

Event #23

Alessandro Barbero

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

The second Italian War of independence is a replica of the first, eleven years later, on the very same stage – but with every other factor changed. Thanks to the web woven by Cavour, Piedmont has the French army – considered toe world’s strongest – at its side. Victor Immanuel II is not a more capable general than his father, though he believes so, but Napoleon III presents himself as the heir to his great namesake, and the world believes him. On the opposing front, old Radetzky has been replaced by a young emperor, Francis Joseph, a strong and loyal army of professional soldiers who speak ten different languages, including Italian, many rivers impeding the enemy’s progress, as well as the fortifications of the Quadrilateral to retreat into should things turn bad. Yet Francis Joseph has no intention of keeping on the defensive.

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Alessandro Barbero is a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022) and Brick for stone (2023), published by Sellerio.

2016 Programme

Event #23

Alessandro Barbero

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

An idea of public space

That place called “home”

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

The last day of summer

The birth of space (and time)

The birth of space (and time)

The space of war. The First Italian War of Independence

Immunity and the brain: a dialogue between two chief systems. From memory to vaccines.

New males: as teenagers, in couples, as fathers

Tv series: a newly emerged continent

Across the American deserts: a voyage through 20th century collective imagination

What do algorithms think of?

That place is gone

The space of rebellion

Other maps, other worlds. Representations of space

The analyst at the movies: thinking by images

From the stars to Life: one, one hundred, one thousand Earths

Architectural space in the past, the present, the future

Families confined and without borders

The best ideas of our lives. Make room for innovation (the real kind)

The space of absence: Patroclus and Andromache

On the other side of the sea

Play it again

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

School is an idea of the world

Asperger Talk Show

Let’s make space for stupidity

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

Is there space for us all? The future of European migrations

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The memory of space. The rubble of climate and rubbish in our homes

Graffiti, tags and murals: when art extends to walls

The poetry of space. Words and drawings on that place we call home

The river is never wrong

Mirror neurons: anatomy of a revolutionary discovery

The boundaries of the soul and of the world