Poets' Coronation on the Capitoline Hill

A laurel returning to the Capitoline after nearly seven centuries

The Poets' Coronation on the Capitoline Hill is a public lifetime achievement award ceremony held in Rome, in the city's institutional heart: the Giulio Cesare Council Chamber of the Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitoline Hill. The initiative brings back to life one of the most evocative traditions of European culture: on April 8, 1341, right on this very hill, Francesco Petrarch was crowned 'supreme poet' with a laurel wreath. After centuries of silence, that solemn gesture is repeated as an annual award, with the declared ambition of establishing itself as a genuine 'Italian Nobel Prize for contemporary poetry'.

Who organizes it and why

The event is promoted and curated by the Federazione AUT-Autori, which brings together authors from literature, cinema, and theater, based on an idea by Alessandro Occhipinti Trigona, in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sapienza University of Rome. The project was selected through a public call by the Capitoline Administration as an initiative of interest for the city, restoring a central role to poetry in the cultural dialogue of the Capital and the Lazio region.

The laurel ceremony

At the center of the event is the symbolic presentation of the laurel wreath, the highest recognition for a poet, accompanied by public readings of the laureate's works, institutional speeches, and artistic performances. The ceremony weaves historical memory with contemporary sensitivity, alternating poetic words with the voices of performers and the solemnity of the venue with a focus on new talents, to whom a special prize is reserved.

Rome, city of poetry

Setting the coronation on the Capitoline Hill is no coincidence: the hill has always been the civic symbol of Rome and, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the stage for poetic laureations. Re-proposing the laurel here means reconnecting the Capital of Lazio to its humanistic vocation and offering citizens and visitors a major cultural event capable of uniting history, literature, and civic life in a single public rite.

An appointment destined to last

The organizers intend to transform the Poets' Coronation into a permanent fixture of the Roman calendar, to be renewed every year around April 8, the date of Petrarch's coronation. The goal is to build, edition after edition, a roster of awarded poets that becomes the living memory of the best Italian poetry of our time.