Jeff Koons, Giuseppe Tornatore and Ornella Vanoni among the laureates of the magnificent Premio Galileo 2000

The ceremony is held in the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio on 19 May

Now in its nineteenth edition, the Premio Galileo 2000, a prestigious prize awarded to actors, institutional personalities from the worlds of culture, music and economics of international relevance, has come down to earth.

The Prize, realised by the Premio Galileo 2000 Foundation with the collaboration of the Municipality of Florence and the Fondazione Teatro della Toscana, links music, art, science and business and over time has rewarded personalities such as Shimon Peres, Muhammad Yunus, Zubin Mehta, Andrea Bocelli, Lang Lang, Riccardo Muti, Carlos Fuentes, Bernard-Henry Lèvi, Roberto Bolle, Claudia Cardinale and Irene Papas.

The prizes of this 19th edition are: Galileo 2000 Prize for Enterprise to be awarded to Philippe Donnet, CEO of the Generali Group; Galileo 2000 Prize Una Vita per la Musica - Giglio d'Oro to Gianna Fratta, international conductor and the first woman to conduct the Orchestra of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome; Galileo 2000 Prize for Art to Jeff Koons; Galileo 2000 Prize for Medical Science to Francesco Montorsi, director of the Urology Operating Unit of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan; the Galileo Prize 2000 for Cinema to Giuseppe Tornatore; the Galileo Prize 2000 A Life for Music Special Lifetime Achievement Award to Ornella Vanoni; the Galileo Prize 2000 A Life for Music - Golden Lily to Lorenzo Viotti, conductor and music director of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dutch National Opera.

The portrait of artist Jeff Koons

Seven well-known personalities will be honoured in the Salone dei Cinquecento of Palazzo Vecchio on 19 May in a ceremony conducted by Sky journalist Monica Peruzzi.

"The Premio Galileo 2000 is the brainchild of my father, Alfonso De Virgiliis, President of the Premio Galileo 2000 Foundation," explains Antonio De Virgiliis, President of the Premio Galileo 2000 Foundation, "and his love for all forms of artistic and cultural expression, for universal themes such as peace, dialogue between peoples and religions sustainable economy, and Europe, which prompted him to expand, edition after edition, the boundaries of the Prize, enriching it with sections aimed at recognising personalities whose action, albeit in different fields, has always been directed in favour of man and his highest values'.