Milan – home of the BookCity literary festival and of good reading, as well as high-tech homes with no bookshelves
Umberto Eco slowly walks across the rooms of his large house in Piazza Castello, in Milan – a veritable ‘house of books’ with more than 30,000 volumes collected over years of study, research, and literary and cultural passion. This image is actually a long-shot sequence scene from the black and white documentary entitled Umberto Eco. La biblioteca del mondo (Umberto Eco. The library of the world), directed by Davide Ferrario and soon to be presented in Milan, at the Anteo cinema, by the Belleville Writing School, as part of the BookCity book festival (it will come out in cinemas in February, as a Fandango production).
Choosing Eco’s private library – as well as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century – as the image promoting a festival that’s unique in Italy and that, year after year (this is the 11th edition), from 16 to 20 November, attracts tens of thousands of people and offers almost 1,500 events such as meetings with the authors, public readings and debates, scattered throughout the city, is an apt and symbolic decision.
“A festival dedicated to books and to reading,” concisely explains Piergaetano Marchetti, president of the BookCity Foundation and influential figure within Milan’s cultural and economic world. And, further, it’s an engaging way to highlight the close relationship between living and reading, attempting to understand and narrate the world, creating and undertaking, defying time through history and stories to set the scene for a better future.
In fact, books most effectively epitomise the opportunities contained within the “future of memory”.
Moreover, Milan is, after all, a city that thrives on progressive – yet also more mainstream and widespread – culture. Indeed, Antonio Greppi, mayor of Milan during that complex post-war period marked by frenzied reconstruction, promised “Bread and culture” while both the entrepreneurial middle class and the most sensible political powers promoted cultural activities such as theatre and musical events through generous and long-term financial sponsorships (the Casa della Cultura Association on via Borgogna – still active today – is only one instance of such efforts). Even today, associations and industries still focus on culture – just this year, entrepreneurial institution Assolombarda awarded Padua the title of “capital of corporate culture”, as culture, to companies, not only signifies sponsorship opportunities but also an asset enhancing the identity and competitive nature of enterprises, through a unique, international “polytechnic culture” blending both humanities and sciences.
A study by AIE (Associazione degli Editori, the Italian publishing trade association), undertaken specifically for BookCity in collaboration with Pepe Research, shows that 75% of Milanese citizens read at least one book per year (not a lot, of course, but nonetheless more than the national average), while 59% has attended at least one cultural event. “Events and reading are part of Milan’s virtuous equation”, points out with some satisfaction the Corriere della Sera newspaper, while the headline by la Repubblica reads “Milan as capital of cultural consumption”. Then again, the annual research survey “Io sono cultura” (“I am culture”), curated by Symbola and Unioncamere (recently presented first at the MAXXI in Rome and then at Casa Fornasetti in Milan), reveals that Milan and the Lombardy region are at the forefront, in Italy, in terms of consumption, entrepreneurship and cultural activities.
Thus, Milan as the city of books, of great publishing houses that have made history (Mondadori, Rizzoli, Bompiani, Feltrinelli, Adelphi, Mauri-Spagnol’s Longanesi, etc.) and new publishing ventures (La nave di Teseo, NN Editore, Iperborea, to mention just a few amongst many); of historic bookshops in evolution (Hoepli) and many other independent ones that have been opened, with much passion and wisdom, both in the centre and in the suburbs; of public and private libraries in cultural centres and in schools, as well as in companies and apartment blocks.
Reading for fun, savouring the pleasure a book can give. Reading to understand and learn. Reading to defy time and get to know different lives and experiences, just as Umberto Eco taught us: “At the age of 70, those who don’t read will have led only one life – their own! Those who read will have lived 5,000 years: they were there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired the infinite… Because literature is backwards immortality.”
Here we find yet another trait of Milan, inspired by reading and culture: the ability to understand others’ ways of life, which entails social inclusion, a welcoming spirit and integration, an aptitude that uniquely combines economic competitiveness and solidarity. Reading to “comprehend” (with its Latin root cum, the same as “comprehension” and “community”). Reading to grow.
Losing such traits would mean losing the soul of Milan.
Let’s pay heed to books, then, and to the public spaces dedicated to books, such as libraries, bookshops and cultural events like BookCity, as well as private spaces like homes where books are at the heart of a family’s language and social interaction (this has been so since Cicero’s times, by the by: “A room without books is like a body without a soul”).
Though here we encounter a critical spot: new urban architectural designs, the “thousand lights” of Milan and buzzing “events”, opulent consumption and showy wealth, ‘archistars’ and skyscrapers in glass and steel redefining the skyline, high-tech homes and floor plans, leave very little room for bookshelves, for spaces dedicated to books. Of course, the new digital generations have a preference for eBooks – yet, are we truly confident that the disappearance of home libraries shouldn’t make us ponder about its architectural, cultural and social meaning?
(Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)
Umberto Eco slowly walks across the rooms of his large house in Piazza Castello, in Milan – a veritable ‘house of books’ with more than 30,000 volumes collected over years of study, research, and literary and cultural passion. This image is actually a long-shot sequence scene from the black and white documentary entitled Umberto Eco. La biblioteca del mondo (Umberto Eco. The library of the world), directed by Davide Ferrario and soon to be presented in Milan, at the Anteo cinema, by the Belleville Writing School, as part of the BookCity book festival (it will come out in cinemas in February, as a Fandango production).
Choosing Eco’s private library – as well as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century – as the image promoting a festival that’s unique in Italy and that, year after year (this is the 11th edition), from 16 to 20 November, attracts tens of thousands of people and offers almost 1,500 events such as meetings with the authors, public readings and debates, scattered throughout the city, is an apt and symbolic decision.
“A festival dedicated to books and to reading,” concisely explains Piergaetano Marchetti, president of the BookCity Foundation and influential figure within Milan’s cultural and economic world. And, further, it’s an engaging way to highlight the close relationship between living and reading, attempting to understand and narrate the world, creating and undertaking, defying time through history and stories to set the scene for a better future.
In fact, books most effectively epitomise the opportunities contained within the “future of memory”.
Moreover, Milan is, after all, a city that thrives on progressive – yet also more mainstream and widespread – culture. Indeed, Antonio Greppi, mayor of Milan during that complex post-war period marked by frenzied reconstruction, promised “Bread and culture” while both the entrepreneurial middle class and the most sensible political powers promoted cultural activities such as theatre and musical events through generous and long-term financial sponsorships (the Casa della Cultura Association on via Borgogna – still active today – is only one instance of such efforts). Even today, associations and industries still focus on culture – just this year, entrepreneurial institution Assolombarda awarded Padua the title of “capital of corporate culture”, as culture, to companies, not only signifies sponsorship opportunities but also an asset enhancing the identity and competitive nature of enterprises, through a unique, international “polytechnic culture” blending both humanities and sciences.
A study by AIE (Associazione degli Editori, the Italian publishing trade association), undertaken specifically for BookCity in collaboration with Pepe Research, shows that 75% of Milanese citizens read at least one book per year (not a lot, of course, but nonetheless more than the national average), while 59% has attended at least one cultural event. “Events and reading are part of Milan’s virtuous equation”, points out with some satisfaction the Corriere della Sera newspaper, while the headline by la Repubblica reads “Milan as capital of cultural consumption”. Then again, the annual research survey “Io sono cultura” (“I am culture”), curated by Symbola and Unioncamere (recently presented first at the MAXXI in Rome and then at Casa Fornasetti in Milan), reveals that Milan and the Lombardy region are at the forefront, in Italy, in terms of consumption, entrepreneurship and cultural activities.
Thus, Milan as the city of books, of great publishing houses that have made history (Mondadori, Rizzoli, Bompiani, Feltrinelli, Adelphi, Mauri-Spagnol’s Longanesi, etc.) and new publishing ventures (La nave di Teseo, NN Editore, Iperborea, to mention just a few amongst many); of historic bookshops in evolution (Hoepli) and many other independent ones that have been opened, with much passion and wisdom, both in the centre and in the suburbs; of public and private libraries in cultural centres and in schools, as well as in companies and apartment blocks.
Reading for fun, savouring the pleasure a book can give. Reading to understand and learn. Reading to defy time and get to know different lives and experiences, just as Umberto Eco taught us: “At the age of 70, those who don’t read will have led only one life – their own! Those who read will have lived 5,000 years: they were there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired the infinite… Because literature is backwards immortality.”
Here we find yet another trait of Milan, inspired by reading and culture: the ability to understand others’ ways of life, which entails social inclusion, a welcoming spirit and integration, an aptitude that uniquely combines economic competitiveness and solidarity. Reading to “comprehend” (with its Latin root cum, the same as “comprehension” and “community”). Reading to grow.
Losing such traits would mean losing the soul of Milan.
Let’s pay heed to books, then, and to the public spaces dedicated to books, such as libraries, bookshops and cultural events like BookCity, as well as private spaces like homes where books are at the heart of a family’s language and social interaction (this has been so since Cicero’s times, by the by: “A room without books is like a body without a soul”).
Though here we encounter a critical spot: new urban architectural designs, the “thousand lights” of Milan and buzzing “events”, opulent consumption and showy wealth, ‘archistars’ and skyscrapers in glass and steel redefining the skyline, high-tech homes and floor plans, leave very little room for bookshelves, for spaces dedicated to books. Of course, the new digital generations have a preference for eBooks – yet, are we truly confident that the disappearance of home libraries shouldn’t make us ponder about its architectural, cultural and social meaning?
(Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)