The Eagle conquers the podium. It is the new Italian Capital of Culture for 2026. A nomination welcomed with a roar of applause in the Spadolini Room of the Ministry of Culture. The thousand-year-old city of pride, framed by the crests of the Gran Sasso, points even more to a sense of rebirth after the pain of the earthquake fifteen years ago. She surpassed the other finalist candidates in a race that saw her competing with Agnone (Isernia), Alba (Cuneo), the all-Pontine derby of Lazio with Gaeta and Latina), Lucera (Foggia), Maratea (Potenza), Rimini, Treviso, and the exploit of the Union of Municipalities of Valdichiana Senese (Siena). The announcement today by the minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, together with the president of the commission, the journalist Davide Desario, who evaluated the dossiers of the candidate cities.
An emotion for the mayor of the Abruzzo capital, Pierluigi Biondi: «This recognition is not compensation for what our people have suffered, but a fundamental element that expresses the desire for emancipation and growth towards the future. The other candidate cities will be our allies and accomplices to create a new Italian cultural network.” «L’Aquila – continues the mayor – is preparing to experience its fifteenth anniversary of the earthquake: as I said during the hearing, the recognition of Italian Capital of Culture cannot be compensation for what happened because there can be no compensation for it that our people have suffered, but represents an element with which to rebuild the social fabric of our communities”. In an ideal relay with the current Capital of Culture, Pesaro, and that of 2025, Agrigento, L’Aquila now becomes the recipient of a financial contribution of one million euros to realize the objectives outlined in the candidacy project. «L’Aquila has a great historical tradition, I believe that the project will expand to the whole of Abruzzo», said Minister Sangiuliano who recalled how Abruzzo was the birthplace of Benedetto Croce, born in Pescasseroli, and the Spaventa brothers , born in Bomba. «So this city has many cultural values to express, and it is an opportunity to make them known».
THE MOTIVATIONS
According to the jury, chaired by Davide Maria Desario: «The dossier proposes a model for valorising the territory and the cultural, artistic and natural heritage. It aims to recover identity, focusing on culture understood as a driving force for growth and as a founding element of a community. The project involves a significant number of entities, creating a strong bond with the surrounding territories. The planned budget is consistent with the objectives. The indicated spending strategy is destined to have an important multiplier effect. The schedule of events and initiatives develops throughout the year and covers the entire panorama of artistic and cultural expression: cinema, theatre, music, visual arts. The attention to young people who will not only be users but actors is appreciated. The project fulfills the indicators of the tender, with good integration between public and private. The centrality and involvement of the museum, library and university system was highly appreciated. The judgment is excellent.”
IT FILE
L’Aquila Città Multiverso is an ambitious program of artistic experimentation for the creation of a model of culturally based territorial socio-economic relaunch capable of projecting it towards the future following the 4 axes of the New European Agenda of Culture: social cohesion, public health, well-being, creativity and innovation, socio-environmental sustainability. Imagining L’Aquila as a multiverse city means seeing it as a complex reality in which multiple parallel dimensions coexist and interact, a city that opens up unexplored possibilities of artistic creativity and urban regeneration, precisely thanks to the dialoguing coexistence of multiple space-time and cultural dimensions. The L’Aquila Multiverse City will thus be able to constitute a replicable model of sustainable development also for Rieti and for the Italian and European Internal Areas. A model that aims to intelligently remodulate the relationship between the urban center and a constellation of small centers with a strong social and cultural identity. A territory, in this sense, still vital and capable of imagining a future project, but which needs a decisive push to open a new, true generative cycle. The 5 strands Multiculturality, Multidisciplinarity, Multitemporality, Multireproducibility and Multinaturality will explore, through a rich program of initiatives, the complexity and cultural and environmental richness that characterizes L’Aquila, Rieti and the surrounding villages. The widespread events, in addition to creating an ecosystem conducive to creativity, will generate benefits in terms of social inclusion and psycho-physical well-being. The new artistic productions, the growth and exchange of widespread skills, the regenerated spaces for the realization of multiple initiatives will contribute to building a lasting legacy for the present and future of this territory rich in resources and potential still unexpressed. L’Aquila Multiverse City will be the beginning of this journey.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read the full article at
The messenger