Monfalcone Geographies

Reading the World from Monfalcone

There are festivals that talk about books and festivals that, through books, try to explain the world. Monfalcone Geografie belongs to the second category. Every spring, for five days, the city becomes a large geographical and cultural observatory, where writers, journalists, scholars, and cartographers meet to try to orient themselves in the present. The theme chosen for each edition — «the maps of our time, the routes to navigate it» — well summarizes the spirit: borders, migrations, geopolitics, identities of places.

Over Seventy Voices in Five Days

The program is packed: dozens of events and over seventy guests, including leading figures in journalism and literature. In recent editions, names like Paolo Mieli, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Toni Capuozzo, Stefano Nazzi, Gabriella Genisi, and Giuseppe Lupo have visited Monfalcone. Alongside the events for the general public, there is GeoRagazzi, the section dedicated to schools, which involves dozens of classes and thousands of students from the area.

A City That Becomes a Stage

The events take place in the symbolic locations of the city: the Casa delle Geografie (House of Geographies), the Teatro Comunale (Municipal Theatre), the Biblioteca (Library), the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Contemporanea (Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art), the MuCa — the shipyard museum — and Piazza della Repubblica. The festival is promoted by the Municipality of Monfalcone and organized with the Pordenonelegge.it Foundation, under the artistic direction of Gian Mario Villalta with curators Alberto Garlini and Valentina Gasparet.

Monfalcone, a Border City

It is no coincidence that a festival on geographies is born right here. Monfalcone, in the province of Gorizia, is a border city by vocation: overlooking the upper Adriatic, shaped by large-scale shipbuilding, and accustomed to being a crossroads of languages and peoples. A place that perfectly embodies the themes of the festival.