2018 Programme
Event #26
Alessandro Barbero
World War I: Caporetto
During World War I, even if Italy was still a weak nation, it faced a very challenging trial on organizational, industrial and human level. After the Unification, all the efforts made in fifty years to build a real, national community were successful. However, Italy is remembered worldwide for an episode that still sounds humiliating – the Caporetto battle. It is a pity, but we cannot blame others, since during Caporetto Italy showed the other side of a nation suspended between modernity and backwardness – the inefficiency, the rhetoric, and the irresponsibility of the ruling class. A burden Italy has never managed to break away from.
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.
Event #17
Mario Cucinella
Architecture as a political action and an instrument for territories’ revitalization

Event #24Approfonditamente
Beniamino de’ Liguori Carino, Giuseppe Lupo, Alberto Saibene
Adriano Olivetti: building a community

Event #31Approfonditamente
Giulia Alonzo, Marco Belpoliti, Adriana Polveroni, Oliviero Ponte di Pino
Criticism 2.0. Cultural communication in the age of the web

Event #59Children / Kids
Caterina Giannotti, Maria Pia Montagna
Writing is a game if you know the rules!
