Enea project, a bridge between myth and today in the name of hospitality – Corriere.it

Aeneas belongs to the firmament of myths but one of our contemporary: he comes from a distant city devastated and erased, he wants to ensure a future for his people and his family, starts from Asia Minor and after a thousand vicissitudes arrives on an Italian shore in the center of Lazio, founds a welcoming civilization, made up of many different from each other but united by the sharing of values ​​and laws. There mercy of Aeneas as the glue of a unification that generates an entire civilization, expression of a culture destined to last for centuries: ours.

the sense of Enea Project/ Founder of a welcoming civilization conceived by the Leonardo Foundation / Civilization of Machines, chaired by Luciano Violante, with the Maxxi / National Museum of the XXI Century, recently led by Alessandro Giuli.

The appointment is for Friday 21 April, on the occasion of the Natale di Roma. There are two venues for the celebration. In the morning, at 11, at the Lavinium Museum in Pomezia, in via del Mare 56, the first event in the archaeological area of ​​the Thirteen Altars, built between the sixth and fifth centuries BC by the allied cities of Rome to sanctify the alliance before the gods, and of the Heeron, i.e. the burial mound, of Aeneas. Speakers will be Violante, Giuli, the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara with greetings from Federica Colaiacomo, director of the Lavinium Museum, and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, head of the Enea Project.

Excerpts from the story of Aeneas, chosen by Luciano Violante, will be recited by the actors Viola Graziosi and Graziano Piazza. There will also be a choir made up of the students of the Pascal classical high school in Pomezia. The Domenico Mazzocchi orchestra conducted by maestro Fabio Galadini will perform pieces by Ottorino Respighi and the Lament of Dido by Henry Purcell.

Buttafuoco says: The Thirteen Altars of Lavinio themselves requested this rite entirely of theater and orchestra. it was enough to come there with Luciano Violante and Alessandro Giuli, in the perfect poetry of the countryside, and from the foundation stone – and thus from Aeneas’ tumulus – listening to the naked voices of Rome we saw what cannot remain unknown to too many. Archeology is poetry here, we have worked on this day to give Lavinio back to ourselves, to the very topical idea of ​​a civilization of hospitality today.

At 7 pm, at the Maxxi museum, in Rome in via Guido Reni, second part of the program with the same modalities and the same protagonists, with pieces by Isocrates, Plutarch, Tito Livio. The volume was also created linked to the project Aeneas, founder of a welcoming civilization created by De Piante Editore.

Luciano Violante explains the meaning of the project thus: Aeneas arrives on the Lazio coast as a foreigner, defeated and a refugee, with Troy burned and lost. Not rejected. On the contrary, he is welcomed and then in turn welcomes foreign people into his city. On the basis of this choice Romulus builds Rome by welcoming men from all over who all want to build a new life. And here is the link with our difficult times: Celebrating this myth on the anniversary of Christmas in Rome intends to reflect on the intertwining of different cultures and roots which can be the compass for a new civilization.

Along the same lines Alessandro Giuli: This event throws a bridge between ancient and contemporary, among the myths of the past that are the basis of our civilization and visions and prospects for a welcoming future with shared values. Rome as a creative, formative, anti-genetic, unifying and universal force.

A project that also has a transparent cultural significance for the collaboration between two different institutions and above all between three different intellectual personalities distant by generation and by political roots such as Luciano Violante (born in 1941, former magistrate and former president of the Chamber, exponent before the PCI, then of the PDS and finally of the Pd), Alessandro Giuli (born in 1975, a youth militancy in Meridiano zero, former deputy director of Il Foglio, appointed in December 2022 to the Maxxi summit by the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano and then by the Meloni government ) and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco (born in 1963, former manager of the Youth Front, MSI and the National Alliance, former president of the Catania building, writer and essayist). But thehe perspective of a future that — looking to the past and to the mythical and founding roots of our culture — knows how to accept the same for everyone on the basis of shared values.