Reading Together, Living the City

A widespread series across Rome's neighborhoods

"Reading Together, Living the City" is the series of author encounters promoted by the Rome Public Libraries (Istituzione Biblioteche di Roma), the public reading institution of Rome Capital. Not a festival concentrated in a single location, but a widespread series that spans municipal library branches scattered across the city's various neighborhoods, from the center to the suburbs, bringing contemporary literature right to the citizens' doorsteps.

The common thread is captured in the title: reading not as a solitary act, but as a shared experience capable of making the metropolis more livable. Each event is an opportunity for encounter between those who write and those who read, and between people who share a space, a time, and a collective sense.

Twenty encounters, every Wednesday

The series consists of twenty weekly events, hosted every Wednesday from January to June, generally at 6:00 PM. The kickoff takes place at the Casa delle Letterature, in the historic heart of Rome, before moving through numerous branches of the city's library system: from the Guglielmo Marconi Library to the Nelson Mandela, from the Renato Nicolini to the Flaminia, from the Casa delle Traduzioni to the European Library, and reaching the more peripheral neighborhood libraries.

Authors from the Italian scene

The heart of the series is the direct dialogue between the author and the readers, built around major new releases. Each meeting starts from a newly published book and turns into an open conversation, where the audience can intervene and engage with the writer. Different voices of contemporary Italian fiction and non-fiction take the stage, from established names to emerging writers.

A library accessible to all

All events are free and open to the public, consistent with the public service mission of the Rome Public Libraries. Some meetings are made accessible to deaf people thanks to Italian Sign Language (LIS) interpretation, while many events are recorded and made available later on the institution's YouTube channel.

The Rome Public Libraries and the Reading Pact

The series is part of the reading promotion policies of Rome Capital, in the Lazio region, and within the framework of the city's Reading Pact. Through "Reading Together, Living the City," the libraries assert their role as local cultural hubs: open, free, and high-quality spaces where books become tools for critical thinking, empathy, and active citizenship.