“Cuneo is an open book” is the title of the dossier that the Municipality of Cuneo will present next Monday 8 July to the MiC – Ministry of Culture to compete for the title of “Italian Book Capital 2025”. Nominated by the Municipality of Cuneo, Oliviero Ponte di Pino as Curator and Scientific Manager of the project and Fondazione Artea as coordinating entity.
For years the Municipality of Cuneo has developed a cultural policy centered on the theme of books and reading, employing itself in the support, promotion and organization of multidisciplinary initiatives linked to the languages of publishing and literature, which animate the places throughout the year of the city’s culture. Among the most followed initiatives is the Scrittorincittà festival, which for 26 years has celebrated the written and transmitted word, bringing together national and international authors with the community of its readers. The Administration’s work on the themes of promoting the culture of books and reading has also resulted in important recognitions over the years, such as the title of City that Reads, since 2017. Furthermore, since 2022, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Culture with PNRR funds, the architectural and functional redevelopment of the premises of Palazzo Santa Croce is underway which, starting from 2026, will become the new headquarters of the Civic Library. These are some of the key points on which the candidacy will be based, which will propose in its dossier the start of a process that will be participated by the community itself that animates the Municipality and its province.
Citizenship, in all its representations and with particular attention to young people, will in fact be involved to imagine the Library of the 21st century, Santa Croce, as a multidisciplinary aggregation space recognized in the cultural geography of the territory, reasoning on the themes of active citizenship, of culture and democracy, as tools that can have lasting effects on the social system and in particular on terms linked to youth training and employment.
Thus Oliviero Ponte di Pino, scientific project manager: “I am very happy to help make this dream come true: a modern, open library, in dialogue with the city. A space that puts the book at the center to make it dialogue with other arts, other media, different types of knowledge, which can become a laboratory of democracy and citizenship”.
“Two hundred and twenty years of history, over 300,000 inventories in the collections, daily activities for everyone, a lively and loved festival and now, in a natural path, a new headquarters for the civic library which nourishes the ambition of being a cultural center of excellence at the service of the city and the territory”says the councilor for culture Cristina Clerico: “The old hospital will become a beautiful place, because beauty heals and generates well-being and nourishes the sense of enchantment that opens new paths. Thus we arrived, naturally, at Cuneo’s candidacy as the Italian book capital, with the ambition of illuminating what is already happening and generating a network that exploits the opportunities that the spaces of Santa Croce will offer, with an eye to the young and very young. We intend to stimulate their curiosity and their desire to meet, listen and discuss which we collect every day. I thank all those who have collaborated and will collaborate in the promotion of the book in the city: all the collaborators in the library sector, the abl association, the Scrittorincittà scientific committee, the volunteers and bodies that support the festival, and, for the steps to come , the Artea foundation and Oliviero Ponte di Pino”.
