RAVENNA - To enter the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, we begin with a significant and symbolic gesture, in the city that proudly hosts the remains of the Florentine poet.
In the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, Ravenna inaugurates the restored tomb, a sepulcher designed at the end of the eighteenth century by the architect Camillo Morigia and the nearby quadrarco of Braccioforte, monuments restored to their original beauty: from here we start with a calendar of initiatives and events dedicated to the father of the Italian language, which will continue until Sunday 12 September 2021, when Riccardo Muti will take the podium for a concert in Piazza San Francesco, also in Ravenna, replicated in the other Dante cities, Florence and Verona.
The evening-event in Ravenna, where the Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini is also expected, includes a first musical moment to seal the inauguration and then the notes of Liszt and Donizetti, in the square.
And at the end the reading, by the actor Elio Germano, of Canto XXXIII del Paradiso, the last of the Comedy and therefore of the extraordinary literary journey of its author.
Ravenna continues with 'Dante Experience', various guided tour appointments to discover the main places of the Poet's last refuge.
Next to it, there is 'Mosaico di Notte' in the Unesco monuments, caskets of mosaics which Dante was inspired by in imagining the world of the Comedy: an example of this are the stars of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, an image present in the conclusion of each canticle. .
'Silent Play for Dante', from 16 September, is instead an immersive guided tour that, thanks to technology, accompanies the participants to discover the Ravenna of the fourteenth century, meeting characters, places and triplets linked to the memory of the Poet and his fortune: the Basilica of San Francesco, Dante's Tomb, the Classense Library, the Silence Zone, the Hanging Gardens of the Palazzo della Provincia and 'TAMO' - All the Adventure of the Mosaic.
But Dante is also, very much, Florence and in recent days the mayor of the Tuscan capital Dario Nardella has asked for a 'stop' to some controversies about the rivalry between the two cities.
To demonstrate this, on the occasion of the 700 / o anniversary, two masterpieces of medieval painting, the famous 'Polyptych of Badia' by Giotto and the 'San Francesco receives the Stigmata' by the Master of the Cross 434, and a canvas of 1854 by Annibale Cats' Dante in exile ', works kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, are on loan for the Ravenna exhibition project' Dante.
The eyes and the mind '.
In July, the director of the Uffizi, Eike Schmidt, visited Dante's tomb to investigate the terms of the collaboration on the occasion of the celebrations.
The Uffizi is also organizing a major exhibition on Dante in Forlì.
A series of events that will frame 2021 and that will have as their fulcrum March 25, a date that scholars recognize as the beginning of the journey into the afterlife of the Divine Comedy.
On the government's institution, that day will be celebrated on Monday.
A day to remember Dante's genius throughout Italy and the world with many initiatives and a strong involvement of schools, students and cultural institutions.