From tomorrow until next Monday it will be a familiar city, but still an Alpine one. Yesterday Cuneo woke up with that healthy tiredness that an excursion in the mountains leaves you with and the counterintuitive need to start fantasizing about the next one, for which the anticipation will already be pleasure.
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The Cuneo Montagna Festival was a trek in six stages that opened and closed with the reflections of two great guests distant from each other in geographical origin, Tommy Caldwell from Colorado and Fredo Valla from Sampeyre, but close in how they were able to inspire the Cuneo public on issues such as the need for commitment to environmental protection and that of living and making the mountains live. Two moments of quiet and attentive and rapt listening, and in between a whirlwind of notes, dances, showers of rain, words in different Alpine languages, meetings, little men built along the path that will help ensure we don’t lose our way in the next few years. months.
“Well done Cuneo, an Alpine city in dialogue with the territory”
Giulia Poetto
May 18, 2024
From Caldwell to Valla the festival brought thirteen thousand people to discuss the “mountain question” with all the means at its disposal. And if we could expect the two big names from Alfa and Omega to hit the mark, and for the great Occitan orchestra to make over six hundred people dance until late in Piazza Virginio on Saturday evening, the rooms were very often almost full for apparently less pop, sometimes even at the same time, are proof that there is a hunger for knowledge of the mountain system in all its facets.
The Cuneo Montagna Festival intercepted this question and gave it an answer, the result of a collective work that brought together Cuneo, Mondovì and Saluzzo, the cities of the Alpine crescent, their respective high lands and many actors who work at five hundred and three thousand meters to enhance and bring to life the Cuneo valleys.
When the great climber Tommy Caldwell talks about the mountains
Extraordinary evening yesterday (14 May) at the Cuneo arena: the greatest climber ever Tommy Caldwell talked about the mountains, his passion for peaks and climbing to over 1500 enthusiasts who didn’t want to miss the opportunity to meet the climber American for the first appointment of the Cuneo Montagna Festival. Lots of applause and requests for autographs. (Danilo Ninotto)
An open and generous festival, which welcomed requests from outside without holding back. «If these days have been a success with the public and satisfaction, the credit goes to all those who, from the beginning or during the course, believed that the heterogeneity of the festival’s proposals could be its strength», says the councilor to the mountain metro of the Municipality of Cuneo Sara Tomatis.
The great climber Tommy Caldwell: “I climb and talk about the urgency of saving our planet”
ENRICO MARTINET
May 17, 2024
With the eyes still full of the crowd that filled the streets of the historic center at the weekend to immerse themselves in the mountain that descended into the city, and the ears in which the Occitan notes and the songs of the Alpine tradition still resonate, now we need to translate the enthusiasm into a system and planning. «The Cuneo Montagna Festival is a stage of a metromontane journey that will continue in the coming months with the working groups that will start thanks to the collaboration with the Polytechnic of Turin – continues Tomatis -. The freshness of the over twenty members of the Alpine Youth Caravan will be fundamental to redefine the narrative and geography of the relationship between city and mountains”.
In its year as an Alpine city, Cuneo already has a date marked on the calendar for a first verification, that of the National Chestnut Fair, which will offer new opportunities for comparison of a metropolitan nature. The longer-term horizon is that of the next Cuneo Montagna Festival, which will continue in the wake of the recently concluded edition. «The combination of dissemination and entertainment hit the mark. It was a festival of many and for all, with transversal involvement both in terms of age and profile of the participants.” Translated: it was not just a festival for professionals and mountain enthusiasts. The Alpine soul of Cuneo has manifested itself in all its strength, now “it’s enough” to let it live.
