Following the extraordinary success of the last edition, from 21 to 24 November sees the return of BOOKCITY MILANO 2013 an event sponsored by the Culture Department of the City of Milan and the organising committee of BookCity comprising the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera Foundation, the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation and the Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers, with the support of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan and AIE (Italian Publishers’ Association, with the support of ALI (Italian Booksellers Association), LIM (Independent Bookstores Milan) and AIB (Italian association of Librarians). For the second time the project benefits from a partnership with Eni and Intesa Sanpaolo, in addition to a contribution by the Cariplo Foundation and EXPO 2015, and the support of Generali, Swatch, Pan Image, FPE, Alessi, Comieco, Car2Go, Somma, as well as a large group of companies that have collaborated to the realisation of the initiative.

“The first edition of BOOKCITY MILANO confirmed the city’s position as the national capital of publishing, and highlighted the great passion of the Milanese for books and reading and enjoyed a success that has echoed across Italy,” said the Councillor for Culture Filippo Del Corno. “With this second edition, we want to further establish Milan’s vocation to read and enhance its artistic and entrepreneurial ability to innovate, creating and proposing paradigms for a new way of ‘doing culture’ in our country. Also this year’s edition will centre around the Castello Sforzesco, which for the occasion will present one of its most precious treasures: the Trivulziano Codex, the manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci, which will be on exhibition for the three days of BOOKCITY in MILAN in the castle’s Treasury. But this year the programme is branching out across even more of the city, spreading virally to a number of public and private spaces and reaching as far as the Rotonda in Via Besana along an ideal ‘Reading Street’ which will involve new spaces and new proposals. An appointment that will expand and extend across the city.

BOOKCITY MILANO is a collective project dedicated to books and reading featuring a full four-day programme of events with more locations and thematic poles than last year. The Castello Sforzesco will remain the beating heart of BookCity with meetings, readings and animation. Among the many new features will be the ‘Reading Street’, which starts from the castle and proceeds along via Dante (Piccolo Teatro Paolo Grassi), Piazza Cordusio, the Loggia dei Mercanti, Piazza Duomo, the University of Milan, the Sormani Library, and arriving at the Rotonda della Besana.

In addition to the 600 events planned at different spaces across the city, including libraries and bookstores, places for reading and books and unusual spaces, BOOKCITY MILANO 2013 will feature a range of special projects, some of which have been active for some time in the area, such as the articulated BookCity project for schools, involving 940 classes from 200 schools and offering workshops in publishing, ebooks, book trailers and editorial activities. There will also be other important events such as reading/therapy sessions at hospitals in Milan and reading and writing paths in the city’s prisons.

BOOKCITY MILAN will take place at a number of locations throughout the city, many of them providing a thematic focus for dialogue on specific issues: Acquario Civico (World City Forum), Arena Civica (Sport), the Sormani Library, the Grechetto Room, the Conference Room of the Palazzo Reale (book crafts), the Giuseppe Verdi Home for Ageing Musicians (Giuseppe Verdi), Fabbrica del Vapore (Design), the Rotonda della Besana (Children) the Adolfo Pini Foundation (Philosophy), Sesto San Giovanni – Villa Mylius (Work), the Institute for the Blind, Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Crafts (fiction and non-fiction), the Piero Portaluppi Foundation (Economics), the Museum of Natural History (Science), the Museum of the Risorgimento (History), the University of Milan, the State Archives (Justice), Palazzo Greppi (History – World War II), Castello Sforzesco – Sala della Balla (Poetry), Teatro Dal Verme (Music), Palazzo Morando (Noir and Fantasy), Palazzo Reale (American Autumn), Palazzo Serbelloni, the Ferré Foundation (Fashion), the cloister of the Piccolo Teatro Grassi and Teatro Franco Parenti (Theatre – Cinema – Entertainment), the Società Umanitaria (Food & cooking), Teatro Dal Verme (Music), Villa Necchi Campiglio (Green).

During BOOKCITY MILAN the city will also be host to a large number of initiatives dedicated to books and reading, in a reading marathon in the metro, reading groups from municipal libraries will fill the metro, along with in the clowns from the Associazione Culturale La Fabbrica dei Clown; talking streets, featuring an extraordinary company of actors, will propose a way of rediscovering the great Italian poets Ariosto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Leopardi and Carducci in the streets that the city of Milan has named after them; tales of crime, murder and great mysteries will be “shouted” from newsstands around the city, while for Stories in taxis, writers in a number of taxis, in particular those of the Radio Taxi 4000, will read a few pages of their latest novels during the customer’s trip.

Exceptionally during BOOKCITY MILAN, from November 22 to December 1, at the Treasury of the Castello Sforzesco, the original Trivulziano Codex by Leonardo da Vinci will be on exhibition. The precious manuscript will be visible, and, virtually, also available thanks to a prototype for an interactive installation for the digital study of the Codex, a project that the City of Milan has promoted at the Trivulziana Library with the support of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Also at the Castle, Book Men will read and interpret a collective reading of love letters exchanged between figures from literature, art and culture, and the Torre del Carmine will be to open to the public, to host four daily readings programmed for Saturday and Sunday.

Plus guided tours of the Merlate (the castle wall and ramparts) and the Paroliamo initiative, a competition to find many words as possible from the many letters scattered in the middle of the courtyard, while the Castle will resound with poetry, literary fragments, sound effects for passers-by. A video-box will also be installed in the castle courtyards, where participants will be invited to leave a message and there will be a morning press round-up made by well-known journalists live in the BookCity café.

The animated ‘Talking streets’ will include a photographic exhibition with images of great writers in the windows of some of the most prestigious buildings, the Agora Expo space will host a workshop for research, exchange and innovation on one of the key issues for our life and the future of our planet: food. Expo 2015 will be at BookCity with a preview of some of the themes and projects of the upcoming Universal Exposition, which, from 1 May to 31 October 2015, will place Milan at the centre of the world. Inside the Castello Sforzesco there will be a dedicated space and a programme of meetings, workshops and games, for a foretaste of the great issues that will revolve around Expo 2015.

Also worthy of note: the Seat connection game, a treasure hunt played on the web, on smartphones, and in the city, a football tournament between writers, publishers, booksellers and librarians run by wuz.it with a particular formula for participation: the price of admission will be a book. The title you decide to donate, along with all those brought by the other spectators, will be made into a collection of books to be made available to schools in Milan.

Radio 2 and Radio 3 will be at BookCity with live coverage from the City of Milan’s Urban Centre.

Unless otherwise indicated, all the events of BOOKCITY MILAN are free with admission subject to availability.

web site: www.bookcitymilano.it | twitter: @BOOKCITYMILANO – # BCM13 | facebook: BookCity Milano