Travel Literature Festival in Rome, spotlight also on "Grand Tour"

Traveling, telling, being fascinated by places and words. The Travel Literature Festival, promoted since 2008 by the Italian Geographic Society and organized by the Associazione Cultura del Viaggio, under the artistic direction of journalist and photographer Antonio Politano, returns to Rome. From June 19 to 23, at Palazzetto Mattei and the Gardens of Villa Celimontana (at Via della Navicella 12) 40 events will enliven the 5-day event dedicated to telling the story of the world, places and cultures, near and far.
Through literature, journalism, photography, TV, theater, music, comics. And "Grand Tour" will also be the protagonist, which on Wednesday, June 19, at 11 a.m., will tell the public - with editor-in-chief Pasquale Raicaldo - about its mission, presenting issue 1 on newsstands (and in distribution by mail) since last June 1.
Born in 2008 from an intuition of Claudio Bocci, the Festival is a project promoted by Roma Capitale - Assessorato alla Cultura and is the winner of the biennial Public Notice "Estate Romana 2023-2024."
"Orienti, orientarsi, dis/orientarsi" is the theme/claim of this fifteenth edition, dedicated to thatOrientechehas attracted and fascinated some authors whose important anniversaries are celebrated (Marco Polo, Conrad, Terzani). Asia, or rather Asias, will be talked about in different ways-from the adventures imagined by Salgari or drawn by Pratt to the actuality of changing countries-and there will be no shortage of journeys to other directions, routes, paths. "Those who travel return and become storytellers," suggests Antonio Politano. "Going and telling. To orient oneself: to have, to look for points of reference in moving forward, compasses, maps, directions. And also to dis/orient oneself: to leave a gap, a margin of freedom, for the possible choice of roads less traveled, an unexpected, a possible disorientation."
Appointment, then, with literature, journalism, geography, anthropology, philosophy, history, geopolitics, photography, TV, comics, music; distances, disorientations, restancies; frontiers, conflicts, wars; cities of the world; ways in nature; travels in the spirit of Moravia or in the company of Pratt; travels among Native Americans, in other Americas, in different Mediterraneans, in the Arctic; travels on foot and by bicycle; birth of new magazines; ancient tools and new ways of writing about travel; seas and oceans.

THE TOPICS OF THE 15TH EDITION

ANNIVERSARIES

4 anniversaries celebrated by the Festival. The 700th anniversary and the 100th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo and Joseph Conrad, with "theatrical movements": "Conradiana. Between Shadow and Darkness," at Tiber Island, and "Toward the East with Marco Polo," in the heart of Rome's Chinatown (with Urban Experience and the Teatro Mobile company). Conrad returns as a protagonist in a meeting together with Bruce Chatwin (whose 50th anniversary of his trip to Patagonia we celebrate), in a literary match-play with two specialists, Conradian and Chatwinian, and the participation of two reading circles connected to the network of Libraries of Rome (Biblioteca Elsa Morante and Biblioteca Casa delle Traduzioni). The festival will pay tribute in closing to Tiziano Terzani 20 years after his death with an interview with Angela Staude Terzani, the screening of photos from a life together and a reading by Lorenzo Pavolini from "Un indovino mi disse."

THE GOLDEN SHUTTLE AWARD

Two awards have been established on the occasion of the Festival. Created in 2008, the Navicella d'Oro Italian Geographical Society Award - now in its 15th edition in 2024 - has been awarded over the years to various realities and personalities: from those who have expressed particular sensitivity to the telling and representation of the world to representatives of organizations and individual citizens who fight for the protection of the environment and respect for fundamental rights. This year's honorees will be, for geography, Professor Emeritus of the University of Bologna Franco Farinelli; and, for the environment, the Swiss association Elders for Climate (Klima Seniorinnen) and the Italian campaign Giudizio Universale which have filed lawsuits against their respective states for climate non-compliance.

THE KAPUŚCIŃSKI AWARD FOR REPORTAGE

The other award created for the Festival (which reaches its 10th edition in 2024) is the Kapuściński Prize: an award for reportage, for the ability to tell about people and contexts, places and cultures, through words, images. This year the award will go for photography to Paolo Pellegrin, one of the most important contemporary Italian photographers, winner of 11 editions of the World Press Photo Award and a member of the Magnum agency. For television, to Pier Francesco Diliberto, known as Pif, for his sensitivity in choosing stories and people to tell. For writing, to Paola Caridi, essayist and journalist, for her book "Hamas. From Resistance to Regime," and again for TV (international section) to Wael Al-Dahdouh, head of Al-Jazeera's correspondence bureau in Gaza. Finally, for overall publishing activity, to Stenio Solinas, director of Settecolori, a publishing house with a taste for travel writing, who on this occasion will present the book "The Man Who Invented History. Travels with Herodotus" with a talk by its author Justin Marozzi, English writer and historian.

THE MEETINGS.

The Festival will travel through "The Thousand and One Routes" with Hugo Pratt (and his Corto Maltese and Simbad revisited today by Marco Steiner and Fabrizio Paladini, with musical forays by saxophonist Francesco Cafiso). Edoardo Affinati will take audiences to 300 cities around the world while the meeting dedicated to Contemporary Asias will feature, among others, Pegah Moshir Pour, an activist born in Iran and raised in Italy, author of "The Night Above Tehran." In addition to the East, we will also go to other cardinal points making westward forays into "other Americas," with a meeting on Native Americans and then to Mexico, Colombia and Chile. We will travel south between the shores of the Mediterranean (Naples, Calabria and Maghreb) and north to the far northern frontier of the planet, the Arctic frontier, to Greenland, Iceland and among the Sami of Norway. We will reenact together with, among others, Toni Maraini and Edoardo Albinati, the "Journey to the Balkans," almost thirty years after the expedition (1997) - organized by the Moravia Fund - that featured a group of intellectuals, writers, artists in Mostar and Sarajevo.
Three are the encounters with protagonists anthropologists and historians of philosophy and literature who dialogue around going. They talk about ways in nature, stories of humans and nonhumans, Adriano Favole and Paolo Pecere; anthropology and philosophy, Marco Aime and Rudi Capra; and remoteness, bewilderment and restance, Franco Brevini, Paolo Furia and Vito Teti.
An in-depth look is devoted to how the way of telling about the world and travel has changed with the advent of the Internet and social networks; two editors(Marco Cattaneo of National Geographic Italy and Angelo Pittro of Lonely Planet Italy) and two travel content creators(Valentina Miozzo and Eleonora Sacco) talk about it. Another focus will be devoted, by the Italian Geographic Society, to the relationship between scientific geographic research and the creation of audio-visual materials. At the conclusion of the Festival a meeting on the sea and oceans, with writer Caterina Bonvicini and oceanographer Francesca Santoro, an ideal bridge to next year's edition of the Festival whose theme will be "Islands, Sea, Oceans."

EXHIBITIONS.
There will be two: "The Tiger is Still Alive," a tribute to Salgari (by the Associazione Friulana Emilio Salgari, on the occasion of the conference dedicated to "The Formidable Geographies of Emilio Salgari," curated by Fabio Negro, which the Festival is hosting; "Unbreakable," a photographic exhibition on the Lakota, a native people of prairie America, the same as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud.

THE WORKSHOPS AND WALKS
Also on the program, four workshops (travel writing, creative writing, reportage photography and travel psychology) and two guided walks-visits (from Villa Celimontana to the Appia Antica and back and to the Presidential Hall at Ostiense Station).

THE TECHNICAL TABLES
Opening the festival will be the first edition of the "Forum of Walks and Other Speeds," to hear voices and best practices on slow and sustainable going, with in-depth discussions on travel by bike and on foot. The Table can count on the support of 4 LAGs-Local Action Groups of Emilia-Romagna that will be present in a dedicated area with their itinerary proposals (Delta 2000, Marecchia and Conca Valleys, L'Altra Romagna, Del Ducato).
The census of intangible cultural heritage will then be the focus of a meeting in collaboration with the National Union of Proloco of Italy (Unpli), the Central Institute of Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture (Icpi) and the National Association of Italian Municipalities (Anci). 

MEDIA PARTNER: RAI Cultura and the Agencies AgCult, QA Turismo, AREA and the magazine Grand Tour and the Italia Energia Group.

The events are free admission (subject to availability) and free (except for the workshops). The meetings - coordinated largely by Graziano Graziani, writer and host of Fahrenheit Rai Radio 3 - take place in the halls of Palazzetto Mattei, headquarters of Italian Geographic Society, which has been promoting the event since 2008, and in the gardens of Villa Celimontana. They last about 50 minutes each, except when otherwise indicated.