January 29, 2021

700 Dante. All Florentine events to celebrate the Supreme Poet

The portal dedicated to Dante's great anniversary and the events not to be missed

Birthplace of the Supreme Poet, Florence could only be the spearhead of the celebrations of Dante on the occasion of the 700 years since his death.
A year of celebrations, inevitably less grand than expected, but no less special, with a long list of events, including online and in presence, collected in a portal created specifically: www.700dantefirenze.it.

More than thirty Florentine institutions - united in an Organizing Committee coordinated by the City of Florence - have decided to tell the story of Dante and his Florence in a dense program, digital and otherwise, through conferences, study days, events and exhibitions open to the general public.

Among the appointments not to be missed

- the virtual exhibition on the Uffizi website Dante Istoriato. Inferno. The Divine Comedy illustrated with all the drawings made at the end of the sixteenth century by the painter Federico Zuccari, famous for having frescoed the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (for more, read our article)

- Dante 700 - A portrait of Dante and the places of the Poet in the photographs of Massimo Sestini continues in the former refectory of the monumental complex of Santa Maria Novella: 23 special shots in search of the legacy that the author of the Divine Comedy has left us: his words, his lyrical, political and emotional world, even his unmistakable profile in Sestini's interpretation. The exhibition, curated by Sergio Risaliti, was presented at the Quirinale in October, and after the Florentine stage, it will be hosted in the main foreign capitals, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Cultural Institutes.

- Alberi In-Versi: the great monographic exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Penone by the Uffizi Galleries, the heart of which will be a specially created work, a 15-meter long textile with verses around a tree, which takes its cue from the passage in Paradise in which Dante Alighieri sees an upside-down tree, with its roots up, which takes the wisdom of heaven to bring it down to Earth. Dates to be defined

- February 24: presentation of the book Emergenze dantesche. dove e come incontrare il Sommo Poeta a Firenze a sette secoli dalla sua morte by Marco Ferri.

- Honorable and Ancient Citizen of Florence. The Bargello for Dante: at the National Museum of the Bargello, the very place where Dante was sentenced definitively to exile and to be burned at the stake in 1302, an exhibition of manuscripts and works of art that reconstructs the relationship between Dante and Florence from the years immediately following the poet's death (1321) until the middle of the fourteenth century, presenting the actors, the initiatives, the places, the themes. From March 23, 2021 to July 25, 2021.

- March 24: on the eve of March 25 the Uffizi Galleries propose at the Auditorium of the Uffizi at 17 a Lectura Dantis entrusted to Paolo Procaccioli, known scholar of the language of Dante.

- March 25: Dantedì, from 2020 a national day dedicated to Dante. Many initiatives throughout Italy.

In Florence, on the 25th will be presented the restoration of the cenotaph of Dante in Santa Croce by the sculptor Stefano Ricci, inaugurated on March 24, 1830 and realized with a subscription of the city.

In the evening, Dante's tercets will be the protagonists of a social initiative carried out in collaboration with the Dante Society of America and New York University. A Call to Action that will invite people from all over the world to recite their favourite passages from the Comedy. The event will open with a streaming greeting from Piazza Santa Croce in Florence and from Dante Park in New York on 25 March.

Also on 25 March, the Percorsi Danteschi (Dante Itineraries) will begin, organised by Mus.e together with the City's World Heritage Office. A unique opportunity to discover the city through the eyes of the poet: the idea is to organise free walks every weekend, from 25 March until December, in small groups and in safety.

March will also see the start of the first of six events that the University of Florence is dedicating to the Poet, entitled Dante and the Italian Poets of the Twentieth Century, which will run until December 2021.

- April 1 and July 1: Fashion Night | Parade of Dante's collection Orequo.

- Dante celebrations at the Teatro delle Pergola, dates to be defined. Among the initiatives scheduled: 1) Project of integral reading of the Divine Comedy in co-production with the and with the participation of young students of the School "L'Oltrarno" and INuovi. 2) Project in collaboration with the Association "Venti Lucenti" - theatrical workshops for schools in the metropolitan area and workshops for citizens within the project "Urban Theater", which will have as subjects of study Dante and his works. 3) Inferno Project, an international production focused on the first cantica of the Divine Comedy, directed by Bob Wilson. 4) Silent Dante Project - An account of Dante's life and works in a journey that travels through the places of his life and poetry both in Florence and Verona. Itinerant performance in the places of the city. 5) Project for the realization of the film: L'Inferno directed by Mimmo Paladino, in co-production with Nuovo Teatro di Marco Balsamo.

- Dante celebrations of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, from March to December. Among the events already scheduled: 1) The reading of the Divine Comedy at the Goldoni Theatre. 2) A concert production directed by Riccardo Muti that will touch the three cities of Dante (Ravenna, Florence and Verona) in September 2021 in which the Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino will be the protagonist of the performance of Franz Liszt's Dante-Symphonie and the world premiere of Tigran Mansurian's Purgatorio, together with the Cherubini Orchestra, part of the Choir and Orchestra of the Fondazione Arena and part of the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Florentine date scheduled for September 13, 2021 at 8 p.m., at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence. 3) The commission to Luca Francesconi of a piece dedicated to Dante that will be performed on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Florentine Auditorium with Zubin Mehta conducting. Scheduled for December 22, 2021 at 8 pm, at the Auditorium of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

- Girard & Dante. "Vita Nova": from January to June, a cycle of six meetings, in each of which the discussion of a part of the "Vita Nova" is proposed, through the conceptual tools offered by the literary critic René Girard.

- September 23: DANxTE, a play conceived, written and directed by Florentine director Pietro Bartolini in collaboration with Massimo Bergamasco. A single show represented in the scenic spaces identified in the city of Florence (spaces in definition: Teatro della Pergola, Sala d'Arme di Palazzo Vecchio, Teatro Tredici). The representation will be made simultaneously in the theatrical spaces in a live evening, transmitted in streaming to expand the audience and then uploaded on Youtube.

- The exhibition L'onor di quell'arte. Dante: seven hundred years of figurative imagination at the Museum of Palazzo Vecchio from December 3, 2021 to March 2, 2022. The exhibition traces, through exemplary cases, the intense relationship between Dante and European art, showing, through works of different ages and origins, the centrality of the Divine Comedy in the construction of Western culture.