Over 1900 people involved, 200 proposals to identify the new routes of culture
Savona culture
– Today, Monday 1st July, Savona’s journey as candidate for Italian Capital of Culture 2027 officially begins, with the delivery of the expression of interest to the Ministry of Culture.
The journey began over a year ago, in spring 2023, when the project took its first steps. Today, after 90 preliminary meetings, 9 thematic appointments, 1900 people involved, over 8000 minutes of discussion, over 200 project proposals have been collected, which will be the New Routes of Culture, the theme chosen for the candidacy and the title of the dossier.
This is a plural candidacy, with 32 municipalities involved: Albenga, Albissola Marina, Albisola Superiore, Altare, Bardineto, Bergeggi, Borgio Verezzi, Cairo Montenotte, Calizzano, Carcare, Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena, Celle Ligure, Ceriale, Cosseria, Dego, Finale Ligure, Laigueglia, Millesimo, Mioglia, Noli, Osiglia, Piana Crixia, Pietra Ligure, Quiliano, Sassello, Spotorno, Stella, Tovo San Giacomo, Vado Ligure, Varazze, Vezzi Portio, Villanova d’Albenga.
An enthusiastic and proactive territorial response, demonstrating how Savona and its inhabitants are ready to get involved for a future that not only concerns the City but the entire Mediterranean.
Russo, mayor of Savona -.
This extraordinary journey is the premise not only to present a competitive dossier, but also to make a change and look to the future. The “new routes” help us to rediscover our identity and to place ourselves at the center of an area that links the Mediterranean, the North West and Europe. We are convinced that this is the way to give a future to Savona and ensure that it completes its post-industrial transition.
I want to thank – continues the mayor – all those who participated with ideas, proposals, or just with their presence; all those who got involved, got infected and are infecting other people from Savona, so that this increasingly becomes the project of the entire local community.
I would also like to thank the over 30 municipalities that have joined so far, seizing the extraordinary opportunity that is opening up for our entire territory. Now a new phase begins, even more exciting in which we will continue to hold together the innovative effort, the global perspective with the full involvement of the territory. A phase in which we will always look higher>>.
Verri, coordinator of the candidacy -. Savona with all the municipalities that support this highly participatory candidacy can and wants to be one of the places in the Mediterranean in which to start a new, powerful experiment.
Experimentation of new infrastructural spaces such as Palazzo della Rovere and the San Giacomo area, which overlooks a thousand-year-old bay, where the Phoenicians already landed, making it a base for trade. But also by experimenting with new relationships, which draw their origins from that thousand-year-old tradition and which new technologies transform from ports into true hubs of knowledge and original cultural production.
Savona 2027 will be an extraordinary surprise made by citizens for an Italian, European and Mediterranean community looking for new ideas and new outlets for a more cohesive and fairer society>>.
The deadline indicated by the Ministry of Culture for submitting applications is 3 July. In the following days the list of cities participating in the competition will be known. In fact, the dossier must be completed and delivered by September 26th.
Then, the Ministry Commission will indicate the ten finalists (12 December) who will participate in the final auditions (March 2025).
The theme
The theme was born from the cloud of words generated by listening to all the participants in the meetings held in the area and shared by the Municipalities of the province of Savona that support the city’s candidacy to build a new socio-cultural project of territorial development aimed at redefining the identity of Savona and the towns on the coast and inland.
The new routes are those that depart and arrive from Liguria and from Savona in particular – a port for over 4,000 years, at the centre of a network of exchanges from all over the world – with consolidated relationships with cities and nations throughout the Mediterranean, with which to build unique, new, sustainable, replicable content and experiences.
The new routes are also those created by sharing with the public, made up of residents and tourists, called to discuss and bring the sense of comparison and cultural dialogue back into daily life: 27 words have been identified for an innovative cultural vocabulary.
Finally, the new routes are the 27 original productions activated by Savona and the same number sent from the rest of Italy and the world on the most relevant themes of the moment. The symbolic place, dedicated to the production of content, will be the Palazzo Della Rovere which, thanks to the Pnrr funds, will be the new Guggenheim of the north-west by 2027, but the project will enhance the other great cultural monuments, starting from the Priamar, the most impressive fortified work in Liguria, cultural and tourist hub of the entire region, and from San Giacomo, the Franciscan convent which will be completely recovered, and will then involve all the most important places of the city and the municipalities of the district.
Completing the proposal is the Port of Savona, one of the main Italian ports considered uniquely cutting-edge for the technologies used and the developments it is working on.
The city
Savona is the longest-lived province in Liguria and Italy, with 29.7% of the resident population over 65 and an average age of 50 (Istat 2023 data) and is the Ligurian city where one lives best, according to the survey on the quality of life in Italy by ItaliaOggi-Ital Communications in collaboration with La Sapienza University of Rome.
It has a past of economic, political, scientific, cultural and sporting stories and has a present of great potential with the port, the Campus and a provincial territory that has 38 museum structures, a widespread welfare association network, 455 sports clubs with 34,259 athletes and the record number of Blue Flags.
It is a city that looks to the future, aspiring to become the “City of 90 minutes” where, within a radius of 90 minutes on foot, by train, by bike or by car, you can enjoy a unique tourist, cultural and outdoor offer . Finally, it is the capital of a province, first in Liguria for tourist presences and eighth in Italy for tourism rate, to which it intends to associate a capacity for conception and planning in which scientific culture, technology and artisan knowledge combine with the most traditional to give way to a new humanism within everyone’s reach.
G. D.
