Here are “The boys of Piazza Primo Maggio”: twelve Stellinians who have made their way

UDINE. The appointment is for Wednesday 17 April in Udine, in the main hall of the Liceo Classico J.Stellini, at 6pm. Entrance is free. In the presence of the authors, the volume, or rather the “Quaderno”, “The boys of Piazza I Maggio”, edited by Elettra Patti, published thanks to the Gli Stelliniani Association, will be presented.

Elettra Patti is director of the series inaugurated in 2013 with the substantial monograph by Stefano Perini, dedicated to the long history of this institution. “The boys of Piazza I Maggio”, the third booklet of the series, whose subtitle is “Twelve Stellinians who imagined the future”, tells the stories of twelve characters who, having matured over three generations at classical high school, with their ideas and their works have distinguished themselves in various fields – from medicine to architecture, from journalism to criticism, from scientific research to civil commitment -, contributing to building a new world.

Retracing the lives of these twelve “pioneers”, as the curator defines them, are just as many Stellinians. And so it is Andrea Purinan who writes about the pioneer of neurology Giuseppe Calligaris (1876-1944); by the Indologist Luigi Pio Tessitori (1887-1919) is Francesca Tamburlini, who also talks about her and her third-year high school classmates; of the architect Angelo Masieri (1921-1952) is Massimo Bortolotti; of the urban planner Roberto Gentilli (1923-2015) is Roberto Bosa; of the architect Maria Antonietta (Toni) Cester Toso (1925-2017) is Liliana Cargnelutti; of the public official and historian Luciano De Cillia (1932-2012) is Chiara Fragiacomo; by the archaeologist Paolo Moreno (1934-2021) is Elettra Patti; by the journalist and art critic Licio Damiani (1935-2022) is Gabriella Bucco; of the art historian and journalist Gabriella Brussich (1945-2001) is Francesca Venuto; of the teacher Angela Felice (1949-2018) is Paolo Patui; of the doctor Paolo Naliato (1951-1995) is Cristina Valente; by the psychologist Giuseppe Disnan (1952-2023) is Maria Rita Colucci.

“The boys of Piazza I Maggio”, published by Gaspari and created with the support of the Friuli Foundation, is a brilliant story, edited with literary sensitivity by Elettra Patti, and offers excellent iconographic material, often unpublished because it belongs to private archives.

As Andrea Purinan, president of the Stellinians, underlines in the preface: “First of all they had been simple ‘boys from Piazza I Maggio’… and we thought that that normality, combined with intellectual curiosity and generous commitment could become an example and testimony for the entire civil society.”

And in fact the apt cover which shows a smiling Sergio Maldini, together with his engineer friend Roberto Foramitti, as they leave high school, wants to remember precisely this: youth has the – eternal – freshness of spontaneity.