The Beaubourg in Paris, the Whitney in New York, the Auditorium della Musica in Rome, the MUDEC in Milan, and the "tragic" Ponte San Giorgio in Genoa after the Porto Antico. And more: the Parliament of Malta, just steps from the co-cathedral housing Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John the Baptist, the Lingotto in Turin with its preserved racetrack, the Sanctuary of San Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo... but how much Piano is there in Europe? Let's find out in the light of an evening of pasta with meat sauce when the Maestro was designing the Riva Center and never spoke about himself!
Do you ever wake up with a start and connect the face of someone you've known over the years to something you've just experienced in reality?
Yes, yes: it happens…
And so a recent night turned into a dive into the extraordinary history of Renzo Piano, which has been going on practically since he was born (1937!).
Thanks to Maurizio Riva, the histrionic frontman of Riva1920 – a company capable of transforming wood and its derivatives into sensations – we ended up at the beginning of the 2000s gobbling down a pasta with sausage ragù – yes, gobbling down because all our attention was focused on the guest of honour, who was not myself – one summer evening near the Montorfano woods (Como) in the serenity of the “Il Grillo” estate, also in the company of Italy's most innovative architect: Renzo Piano, precisely.
Having placed the scooter on its stand, we were immediately captivated by the charm the Architect exuded, even as he remained silent, listening to the ideas of the histrionic Riva, who in April 2026 once again strengthened architecture at Milan Design Week, with the Dentro and Fuorisalone. And the Riva Center, designed by Renzo and Matteo Piano, was illuminated at all hours, its Siberian larch cladding unable to block the rays of emotion emanating from the now world-renowned Wood Museum.
For those who have lived there and have roots and friends there, in Brianza, the ancient Furniture Fair continues to arouse the discreet fascination of the imagination and industriousness linked to wood, which the "artisan artists" go to collect in the most remote and lesser-known corners of the Earth to expertly work it in the "workshops" that sometimes become art ateliers.
It was said... Renzo Piano. Startled awake by the image of that face outlined by a then-thin beard, millions of his images flashed before my eyes. And so, starting from the closest and most frequently visited point, the Parliament Building in Valletta, here in Malta, a stone's throw from Caravaggio's paintings (!), a Tour of Memory began, providing a few hours of wake-up call centered on Made in Italy culture, coinciding with the Fuorisalone and the Day dedicated by the Italian Government to Made in Italy (Wednesday, April 15th for the year 2026).
And so my mind began to wander from Valletta to Paris, home to the Beaubourg, or rather the Centre Pompidou, which was systematically visited on the sidelines and even during the final carousel of every Tour de France (if not evicted from the Olympics as happened in 2024 in favor of Nice): traditionally, the Grande Boucle wears out the jewel designed by Piano with Richard Rogers, coming up from the parallel Rue de Rivoli where the Paris City Hall and the Louvre Museum are located, before flowing into the Place de la Concorde and then onto the Champs-Élysées that lead to the edge of the Arc de Triomphe.
Yes, it's true: the Giro d'Italia recently conquered Rome, but the Tour has always ensured that Paris is dominated by the most international sporting event after the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, which, however, are held every four years and rarely return to the geographical locations where they wrote memorable chapters. But the Giro, as we know, is so strongly drawn to the emblematic Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Imperial Forum that it overlooks the existence of the Auditorium in the capital's Parco della Musica, a venue also designed by the ingenious Genoese architect and chosen by Oleg Tinkov—owner of a cycling team with mixed fortunes, like the Team Principal—to announce his riders' ambitions in a year when the eyes of the entire world were on him.
Renzo Piano and his creations are present throughout Europe and in two strategic locations in the United States: New York with the Whitney Museum of American Art and San Francisco with the California Academy of Science. Visits to both were offered to us as a complement to the Tour de Trump and the Coors Classic, at a time when European cycling was discovering the much-hyped American sport that it was hard to believe would collapse so quickly.
Outside of Italy, Europe boasts Piano as a "holy man" in London with The Shard, in Oslo with the Modern Art Museum, and in Santander with the Centro Botin. The Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, and the 1993 World Championships in Norway, won by the much-discussed Lance Armstrong, ahead of Miguel Indurain and Olaf Ludwig, have given us the opportunity to experience the sensational monuments listed above up close. Likewise, the Giro d'Italia (and other events) has offered us, in our homeland, the opportunities to experience what Genoese genius has also left us, such as the MUDEC and the Bovisa Polytechnic in Milan; the Niccolò Paganini Auditorium in Parma; the Porto Antico and the very sad (due to the tragedy) Ponte San Giorgio in Genoa; the Sanctuary of San Pio da Pietralcina in San Giovanni Rotondo (Foggia); the Stadio San Nicola in Bari; the Auditorium del Parco in L'Aquila, the MUSE in Trento and the Lingotto in Turin, preserving the track on the roof of the factory where FIAT cars were tested.
Piano & Rice first, then Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW): these are the acronyms you read around the world, the technical structures capable of handing down to posterity the skill of the immense Renzo, who that night in Montorfano was little more than… Grillo, in the sense that he sang little of himself, except to recount the pleasant half-day spent boating on nearby Lake Como: sailing was and remains his main passion outside of his daily work. His works speak for themselves. Try entering Valletta through City Gate and walking, even ideally around the new Parliament Building, discovering the Theatre, observing the moat. Piano has redesigned the capital of the country that hosts us. The impact with the city speaks volumes about him as much, and perhaps more, than Michelangelo Merisi's Beheading of St. John the Baptist, also because (but not exclusively) Caravaggio's masterpieces are securely enclosed within the co-cathedral.
Piano's works unfold in the open air. If Maurizio Riva were to come and "visit" him, he would fall even more in love with "his" Maestro and would surely sense the blossoming of a new idea to lock away in Cantù, at the Riva Center, home to the 12-meter-long Antique Table, crafted from Kauri wood brought to Brianza from New Zealand and said to date back 48.000 years!
Prosit.
