Next Thursday June 20th at 6pmIn the Estense Hall of the Town Hall, will be presented”MiVa”, a book that tells “The long love story between Milan and Varese” signed by a Milanese Varese by adoption, Federico Bianchessiand from a from Varese with Milanese roots, Fausto Bonoldiand edited by Pietro Macchione.
They will talk about it with the mayor Davide Galimberti and with the Councilor for Culture Enzo Laforgiathe professor Robertino Ghiringhellifor decades a history professor first at the State University of Milan and then at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, and the director of the Prealpina Silvestro Pascarella.
In the twenty chapters of the volume, dedicated to the thousand-year history of relationships of all kinds between the two territories, with attention also to the historical role of cities as Busto Arsizio, Gallarate and Saronno, the stories of characters are reconstructed in a rigorous but not pedantic way, from the fathers of the Church to the protagonists of the worlds of industry and politics, art and entertainment, sport and cuisine who have embodied belonging in their existence to the vast area between the Milan Cathedral, designed, built and decorated largely by the people of Varese, and the Milanese Sacro Monte di Varese. And the authors are certain that in the pages of the volume not only the people of Varese but also the people of Milan will discover many things that they don’t know about the places where they live.
Bickering and conflicts have not been lacking over the centuries but from the age of stilts to that of motorways, from fiefdoms to factories, from the ethnic fusion of the Celts to the global one, from the Navigli to the land of lakes, from Latin villas to modern holiday homes, the panorama ranges over an exemplary ability to weld interests and visions into an idea of a metropolitan community spread over two thousand seven hundred square kilometers populated by four million inhabitants.
The book offers an overall picture that is both synthetic and rich in details. Based on a concept of history as a narrative primarily of civil life, the authors revisit political scenarios and battlefields but above all enter with narrative vivacity into theaters and cinemas, stadiums and racecourses, artists’ ateliers and among the pages of great writers and poets, in industries and kitchens.
Federico Bianchessi and Fausto Bonoldi induce the reader to follow the itineraries of merchants and travelers of every era in a carriage, car, train, tram, cable car and boat, to savor the dialectal varieties of Milanese, Bosino and Bustocco when you sit at the table, to listen to the star performers of opera but also those of cabaretto review television programmes, the faces of actors, to listen to musicians, always in the dimension of widespread human, social, economic and cultural commuting.
