Some loves never end: the one between Cesare Cremonini and his Bologna it is renewed and increased with the passing of time, a perfect marriage that is consummated every time through new opportunities to collaborate and celebrate the Petronian culture together. This year, the wedding anniversary will be celebrated from 5 to 9 June among the porticoes of San Luca. The Bologna Portici Festival boasted the collaboration of a truly exceptional artist: the city’s favorite son, Cesare Cremoninicomposed the musical background for the event which will illuminate the path of one of the most famous pilgrimages in the entire peninsula.
The festival, now in its second edition and already confirmed for next year,
and aims to enhance the city in its entirety, enhancing its geometries and architectural roundness, culture and traditions, in a year in which Bologna celebrates successes and historical milestones: the 150th year since the birth of one of the greatest inventors in modern history and its most illustrious citizens, the physicist Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi (born 25 April 1874), who, with the discovery of radio waves, marked a before and after in the history of the evolution of world communication. The qualification of Bologna in the Champions League, an achievement achieved after 60 years of history.
A real portal, that of San Luca, rich in beauty and spirituality,
which starts from the city center and reaches the top of the hill overlooking the city. On the occasion of the event, the route will be exceptionally illuminated even at night by the evocative projections of land-light artist German Philipp Frank, who will enchant his visitors with a fascinating play of lights and shadows, in contrast with the scenic beauty of the surrounding hills and embellished by the soundtrack composed for the occasion by the producer Alessandro Magnanini and Cesare himself. The project, which was born from the mind of the Bolognese artist himself and takes the name of “Lights in San Luca”, its acoustic component is inspired by the show given way back in 2011 by the Japanese-German duo of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, staged in the summer at the German academy of Villa Massimo, in Rome.
“A small road to Santiago”, as Cremonini himself defined it on social media,
a mystical path that passes through hundreds of steps and arches and leads to the basilica in which the faithful can admire a relic of the holy evangelist whose name it bears. An open-air tunnel that will soon see kilometre-long queues of people crowding together and tackling the long climb together in a truly enchanting setting. The liturgy of the pilgrimage to the sanctuary is repeated annually, especially among students seeking a blessing in view of the dreaded state exam. Who knows how many of you will have found yourself the day before graduation symbolically walking along those 3,796 metres, 666 arches, 498 steps and 15 chapels while humming “50 specials” with headphones in my ears, in the grip of anxiety and fear of not making it, comforted by those very light notes that already hint at the imminent arrival of the holidays.
Not just agitated students:
this path is traveled every year by thousands of tourists from all over the world, who want to experience the spiritual essence as much as a nice plate of lasagna on Sunday lunch. In 2023, more than one hundred thousand responded to the appeal, and this year we are definitely aiming for an encore. In November it will be 25 years since Lùnapop led by Cesare Cremonini they made their debut in the Italian musical panorama and have settled forever in our collective imagination. Cremonini, who showed up for his final exams way back in 1998, at the “Albert Sabin” Scientific High School in Bolognacertainly not equipped with a banal Latin dictionary or a periodic table but rather with a CD player containing the aforementioned 50 specials: he hasn’t forgotten his origins.
Between one tour and another, immersed in the greenery of those same much-vaunted Bolognese hills, he continues to work on his music with the same passion as always and, while his latest project takes shape, he does not shy away from the initiatives undertaken by the administration of his favorite city, for which by his own admission he feels an “almost pathetic” love, as stated in a recent interview. A beautiful festival that aims to celebrate Bologna through numerous initiatives and dedicated events that honor the traditions, landscape and architectural beauties of the city but also its most beloved children.
