Download the complete document (1.26 MB).Naples participated in the second edition of the Universal Forum of Cultures that was held in 2007 in the Mexican city of Monterrey and, through its own exposition space "Napul'è", offered to over 4 million and a half visitors of the Forum a virtual journey through the history, archaeology, architecture, art, cinematography, theatre and musical tradition of Naples. Moreover it organized great cultural events like the exhibition on Neapolitan landscapes from '600 to '900, the concert of Massimo Ranieri and the orchestra of the Theatre San Carlo, and the great closing concert of the Mexican event. The stand of the city of Naples, an environment half "room of wonders" and half "dark room", was able to offer to the visitors different aspects of the city, as a sort of archive of its resources and treasures.
The four walls of the stand were devoted each to one of the four themes of the forum: Peace, Knowledge, Sustainable Development and Cultural Difference.
Monitors, screens and projectors invited the visitor, through texts, ideograms and images, to an interactive search and discovery of the various multimedia material on the city of Naples. This installation was conceived also to remember the importance of the city historical centre appointed World Heritage site by the UNESCO, symbolic place of "condensation" of the themes of the forum.
Some young Neapolitan authors will present a reading of personal works, whose common feature is to be focused on a particular place of the city of Naples.
The Neapolitan art of crib-making will be presented, both through the exhibition of pieces of the most famous Neapolitan shops, and through the live creation of Nativity clay figurines. The artisans of the shops Scarabattola, Ferrigno, and Corciones will not only bring to Mexico their most appreciated works, but will also attract the attention and curiosity of the visitors through the live creation of clay figurines representing the Nativity, inside the stand.
The purpose is to involve the children and young people of the Forum in the creation of an animated story, entirely conceived and realized by young people. During the workshops will be realized short films, comic strips, and books that will be distributed during the Forum.
Four digital jukeboxes, four totems of yesterday's and today's melody will bring to Mexico the history, the present and the seeds for the future of a culture that has travelled and continues to travel around the world. An unbelievable, exciting and stimulating, summary that draws from the almost 40.000 titles preserved in the Museum of Melody in Naples RAI archive.
The history of the orchestra is interconnected, in a compelling way, to that of the most ancient theatre in Europe. The names of great directors leading the Neapolitan complex cannot be counted: from Toscanini (1909) to Victor de Sabata (1928), not to say the composers Pizzetti and Mascagni, up to the great contemporaries as Claudio Abbado, who debuted in 1963, and Riccardo Muti in 1967. The orchestra contributed in a important way to the two "Abbiati" awards, assigned by the Italian musical critics in 2002 to Königskinder. Massimo Ranieri is undoubtedly the best loved Italian voice, especially at an international level, and among the more genuinely Neapolitan musical products.
In the splendid historic frame of Explanada Plaza 400 años, Neapolitan and Mediterranean sounds, exotic rhythms, ancient and contemporary sounds will alternate and will combine in a melting pot of sounds and emotions, telling the differences but also the common elements and the eternal passions of the people of Earth. At the end a sensational jam session will unleash the talents and the artistic fury of the many famous protagonists.
Moments and different aspects of the historical city are proposed in this itinerary that aims to document a genre, that of the landscape that, undoubtlessly, characterized at an European level the Neapolitan artistic scenery. The presence in the city over the centuries of so many foreign artists, often foreground, favoured the formation of a lively school of local landscape painters able to receive and elaborate, suggestions coming from other painting schools.
Peace Camp, inaugurated in Barcelona in 2004 on the occasion of the first Universal Forum of Cultures and realized in collaboration with the United Nations, the local governments, and the civil society of different cities, is a project that has the purpose to gather hundred of young people of different nationalities in an important educational and growth experience.
The savoury creations, the most delicious fantasies without abdicating the precepts of art and tradition. This is Neapolitan cuisine, queen of the Mediterranean tradition with its tastes, perfumes and nutritional properties, candidate to represent the home food culture, privileging fresh and genuine ingredients, a creative and fanciful application of them, such to return the pleasure and the social and cultural values of eating together, a ritual more and more at risk in today's frantic society.