At the end of January, the verdict of the MIC (Ministry of Culture) on the shortlist of 10 finalists for the title of Italian capital of culture 2024. Let's find out how she went.
The 10 finalists
They are Sestri Levante with the Tigullio (province of Genoa), Mesa (in the province of Brindisi), Viareggio e Grosseto (in Tuscany), Vicenza e Chioggia (in Veneto), Union of Municipalities Paestum-Alto Cilento (in the province of Salerno), Pesaro e Ascoli Piceno (in the Marche) e SIRACUSA (in Sicily) the 10 finalists of the Italian Capital of Culture 2024 project. This was officially announced on January 31st by the Ministry of Culture, selected by a careful and specific jury chaired by Silvia Calandrelli, director of RAI Cultura. Big or even very small cities than now I'm immediately at work for the next step: the revision of the candidacy for a official presentation of the project on 3 and 4 March 2022. In just over a month, therefore, we will discover the absolute winner. The chosen city will then welcome the baton from the owners of 2024 at the beginning of 2023 (exceptionally two cities): Bergamo and Brescia.
The other candidates
There are 23 cities who had submitted their candidacy at the end of October 2021. All the regions of Italy have come for a while, each bringing their own cultural, historical and even landscape baggage. They are: Ala (Trent), Aliano (Matera), Asolo (Treviso), Burgio (Agrigento), Capistrano (Vibo Valentia), Conversano (Bari), Diamond (province of Cosenza), Gioia dei Marsi (L'Aquila), La Maddalena (Sassari), Pordenone (in Friuli-Venezia Giulia), Saluzzo (Wedge), Mountain Municipalities Union Amiata Grossetana (Grosseto), Vinci (Florence). Of these, as we have seen, only 10 made it to the final.
The title of Capital of Culture
We could ask ourselves: why so much trouble? What does it mean to become the capital of culture? The project was born in 2014 from an idea of the then (and also current) Minister of the MIC (then MIBACT) Dario Franceschini. The idea follows that of the European city of culture, a title that in 2019 was assigned to an Italian city, Matera. The winning city receives from the Ministry the important sum of one million euros to carry out the cultural project with which she applied. Among the main purposes is that of enhancing the cultural and landscape heritage and of course that of improving the services for tourists.
Specifically, the project aims to "support, encourage and enhance the autonomous planning and implementation capacity of Italian cities in the field of culture, so that the value of the cultural lever for social cohesion, conflict-free integration, identity conservation, creativity is increasingly understood , innovation, growth and finally economic development and individual and collective well-being". With the 2023 pairing - Brescia and Bergamo - Lombardy is the region with the largest number of cities to have won the title: already 3.
Capital of culture 2022
And for 2022? If you missed the news, this year's Italian Capital of Culture is Procida. The small island-town curled up by the sea a few hundred meters from Naples, won over the competitors with a beautiful slogan: "Culture does not isolate". Procida picked up the baton from Parma, capital of culture 2021, on January 14th and is preparing for a grand opening already for spring.
Source photograph in evidence: Parma - Teatro Farnese - Source www.bestofcinqueterre.com CC BY-SA 4.0
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