Conferences

In collaboration with the Commitee for the celebration of the centenary of Raphael, the University for foreigners of Siena and the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, under the auspices of the Papal Committee for Historical Sciences, and on the initiative of the Diocese of Pescia, we will organize at Villa Lante al Gianicolo, next 28th and 29th October 2021, the international conference ‘Baldassarre Turini between the Tuscany of the Medici and the Rome of Raphael. Politics, arts and religious reformation, 1513-1543’, which will gather renowned scholars of history and history of arts. Download the program for more details.

We re-start our activities in presence with an intensive course addressed to secondary school teachers of the Tuscany Region, within the project ‘Training to know, knowing to live together. Religions and citizenship’. The course is organized by our Institute in collaboration with the Regional School Office of the Minister of Education and with the Union of the Islamic Communities in Italy, with the financial support of the Cassa di risparmio di Firenze Foundation and under the auspices of Regione Toscana, the Municipality of Florence and the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara, and it is recognized for the purpose of the continuing education. The school teachers will have the opportunity to discuss and debate with renowned university scholars, Christian theologians and Jewish and Islamic spiritual guides, getting also in touch with the participants to the course of the beginning of 2020 during an intercultural laboratory. The inauguration will be hosted by the Tuscany Region at Palazzo Cerretani, Piazza dell’Unità Italiana 1, in Florence, starting from 9.00 a.m. on Friday 28th August 2020. Download here the program for more details.

On Friday 28th February 2020, at 6 pm, our Institute will host the launch of the book by Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco ‘Sotto il suo passo nascono i fiori. Goethe e l’Islam’, edited by La nave di Teseo, Milan 2019. The Germanist Simona Manetti Ignesti and Milva Segato, of the Regional School Office in Tuscany, will discuss with the authors the elements detectable inside his letters and disseminated into the archives of the approaching of Johann Wolfgang Goethe towards the Eastern world and especially towards the Islamic Eastern world, but in a fruitful and vital connection with the Western philosophy and spirituality. It will also be the occasion to debate on what Islam is nowadays in Italy and in Europe. Download here for more details.

On Thursday 27th February 2020, from 9 am, a conference dedicated to the Sienese Jewish life during the early modern history will take place in Siena. Divided between the local Statal Archives and the Sinagogue, the sessions of this international congress will focus on the Jewish archival collections; on economics, society, demography, laws and culture inside and outside the Sienese ghetto; on Jewish music and rites, in dialogue with the city context. Organized by the Statal Archives of Siena, the local Jewish Community, the Statal Department for the cultural heritage and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris, in collaboration, among the others, with our Institute, the conference will be an important occasion to deepen the knowledge of the Sienese and Tuscan Jewish history. Download here for more details.

The new course ‘Training to know, knowing to live together. Religions and citizenship’ is about to start: addressed to the Islamic spiritual guides in order to contribute to their formation at our constitutional values and at the history of the Italian civilization and culture, together with the knowledge of the basis and history of Judaism and Christianity, the course is organized by our Institute in collaboration with the Union of the Islamic Communities in Italy, with the financial support of the Cassa di risparmio di Firenze Foundation and under the auspices of Regione Toscana and the Municipality of Florence. The inauguration will be hosted by the Presidency of the Regional Council at the Sala del Gonfalone, Palazzo del Pegaso, in Florence, starting from 10.00 a.m. on Saturday 25th January 2020. During the inauguration Alessandro Vanoli, historian and writer, who has studied the relations among Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Mediterranean area, will give a lectio magistralis. Download here for more details.

From Monday 20th to Friday 24th January 2020 the first winter workshop organized by our Institute in order to facilitate a deepen knowledge of the archives of the Holy See and of the documents preserved therein will take place in Rome, at the Sala Erba inside the Barnabite complex of S. Carlo ai Catinari. The lectures will be held by professors Gianfranco Armando, Benedetta Borello, Giorgio Caravale, Giovanni Pizzorusso and Vitale Zanchettin. The workshops on the documents will be entrusted to Dr. Matteo Binasco and Dr. Giuseppe Mrozek. And there will be guided tours to the following archives: Apostolico Vaticano; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Vicariate of Rome; de Propaganda Fide and Fabbrica di San Pietro. A new occasion addressed to young and older scholars of various disciplines in order to support the historical research and the enhancement of the ecclesiastical documentary heritage. Download here the inauguration poster.

On Sunday 15th December 2019, at 4.30 pm, the AltreNote Choir of Rome, in collaboration with our Institute and the community of the Fathers of San Filippo Neri in Florence, will give a concert of sacred musics and songs inside the amazing baroque context of the church of San Firenze. Specialized in songs of the Christian and Jewish traditions, with an opening towards the traditions of the various continents, AltreNote will join our Institute, which aims, in doing so, to wish a Merry Christmas. Download here for more details.

On Friday 29th November 2019, at 5 pm, a new step of the launch of the book ‘Scrivo all’amico. Carteggio (1930-1963)’ will take place in the prestigious Palazzo delle Aquile in Palermo, the headquarters of the Municipality of the Sicilian city. Maurizio Sangalli, University for foreigners of Siena, and Giorgio Scichilone, University of Palermo, will discuss about the letters exchanged in the central decades of the Twentieth century between Giorgio La Pira, Mayor of Florence, and Giovanni Battista Montini, the future pope Paul VI. The critical work on the letters was edited by Maria Chiara Rioli and Giuseppe Emiliano Bonura, taking advantage of a scholarship of our Institute. The launch will be chaired by the Mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando. Download here for more details.

Next Friday and Saturday 15th and 16th November 2019 the second appointment of the project ‘Removing obstacles. Fundamental Rights and Constitutions’ will take place. Conceived and organized by our Institute and financially supported by the Fondazione Marchi in Florence, under the auspices of the Società italiana per lo studio della storia contemporanea (Sissco) and in collaboration with the Fondazione Intercultura of Colle di Val d’Elsa, some tens of students coming from the high schools of Florence, Prato and Pescia will gather at the prestigious Convitto Nazionale Francesco Cicognini of Prato together with some other students coming from Denmark, France, Germany and Netherlands to hear and discuss with renowned university scholars on the fundamental principles of the Constitutions of their own country. This two days conference represents the conclusion of a path developed all along the present year: a relevant step was, in September and October, some artistic workshops, coordinated by Rodolfo Sacchettini and Francesca Sarteanesi, during which the students were able to create a web-series, shooted and assembled by Lele Marcojanni from Bononia, and that will be presented during the conference. Download here for more details.

On Thursday 14th November 2019, at 6 pm, an event on the fortieth anniversary of the Khomeini’s revolution in Iran will take place at the Sala multimediale of S. Maria Novella in Florence, in collaboration with the Department of education, university and research and the Department for the relations with the religious confessions of the Municipality of Florence. The journalist Luciana Borsatti, for many years correspondent from Teheran of the Ansa Agency, will interview Parisa Nazari, a woman of Iranian origins who lives in Italy and is very dynamic from a professional, cultural and artistic point of view. Through that extraordinary witness, we will be able to recall the nowadays life in Iran, the religious and political aspects, the society, the condition of young people and the women. At the end of the afternoon, a buffet with plates from the Middle East traditions prepared by the Istituto alberghiero Aurelio Saffi of Florence in collaboration with our Institute will be offered to the public. Download here for more details.