Italy’s Culture Ministry has been flaunting some impressive numbers this week. In 2024 the country’s museums apparently attracted a record 60 million visitors, generating over 313 million euros in revenues (+34% since 2022). This is “good” news in the narrow sense that more people are accessing culture. Unfortunately, though, the picture is not as rosy as the data might suggest. Last week Federica Pasini and Rosanna Carrieri wrote a powerful piece for Jacobin ITA offering an insider’s take on the plight of cultural heritage workers. They describe understaffed provincial museums forced to reduce hours, libraries facing cuts to resources, archaeological sites being hired-out to private luxury parties and super elite weddings with increasing frequency. Meanwhile, public ticket prices continue to rise. Here in Florence, to give just one example, entry to the Uffizi will now cost you 25 euros (rising to 43 euros if you fancy a walk down the Vasari corridor). This is daylight robbery, particularly given the comparative decline in services. Politicians and administrators, meanwhile, tell us all that Italy’s culture is not going anywhere; that it’s eternal and evergreen. But that’s not quite true is it? It takes patience, respect, passion and proper funding to take adequate care of heritage sites, libraries and museums, and this requires staff who themselves feel respected. Instead, more and more workers are confined to precarious and zero-hour contracts, trapped in low paid positions without any collective spaces to articulate their own vision of management. Over the coming weeks, precarious workers across Italy will be organizing strikes, boycotts and flashmobs in an effort to draw more attention to the plight beneath the headlines. So while the government shows-off its positive numbers, I’d implore readers here to keep the bigger picture in mind, follow the workers directly and show support.
I don’t often write about finance here. This week, however, there are some important movements in the Italian banking sector that you’re going to want to be up to speed on. The short version is as follows: after decades of crisis, Italy’s banks are finally showing some signs of sustained stability, and a few of the biggest players are considering new forms of cooperation to consolidate their power. Monte dei Paschi, for one, has vastly improved its internal governance since the state intervened to nationalize the bank in 2017, and the management is now in talks with Mediobanca about a possible merger. Taken alongside other developments – such as Unicredit’s approach to BPM and the German bank Commerzbankbusinesses – financial journalists are noting signs of an unexpected dynamism that hasn’t been seen for at least two decades in il bel paese. For the Italian speakers among you, Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli provided a useful lowdown for the Internazionale podcast here [12.18]. You can also read her ENG analyses in the Financial Times here [sadly, though, it’s behind the paywall].
A couple of weeks ago, I shared a few doubts about this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale and what, to me, seems a rather dubious curatorial concept. Well, the show finally opened this week, and the first responses have only confirmed my fears. Phineas Harper’s essay for Art Review, ‘Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Review: A Tech Bro Fever’, is particularly cutting, and pulls no punches. In his review, Harper describes the main Arsenale show as being overburdened with noise, unnecessary AI tools and simply too many contributions “crammed together in a relentless succession,” in “a claustrophobic mess of bio and techno theatrics” ultimately relying on “expensive machines to solve problems that didn’t need fixing in the first place.” Ouch! If there’s a saving grace, according to the critic, it’s the national pavilions, which this year, for once, “have an uncommon coherence, including many curatorial tactics that resonate with each other” and which offer a human counterbalance to the macho arrogance of the main show. Harper’s piece is extremely insightful I think, so do check out his full review here and if you still want to visit after reading it, the Biennale runs, as ever, until the end of November.
Arts & Culture: time, which sees all things
The Guardian’s theatre critic Chris Wiegand penned an interesting piece this week reviewing the new season’s drama at the ancient theatre in Taormina, and it’s worth reading regardless of whether you’ll be heading there or not this summer. Wiegand draws attention to two shows. Robert Carsen’s ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ apparently provides an austere, serious, almost spiritual adaptation of Sophocles’s play; rooted in the intense sparsity of the tragedy and the dialectic between the chorus and the lonely, tortured protagonist. Gianni Carluccio’s ‘Electra’, meanwhile, opts for a more modern, impressionistic and poetic approach to the source text; making use of piano, music and choreography to emphasise the sadness and grief that underpin the protagonist’s final act of violent catharsis. Taormina is arguably the best place in the world to watch ancient Greek tragedy on stage, and with this year’s season looking so strong, now seems an excellent time to book a ticket to see a show. Read Wiegand’s full review here and find out more about the productions over at the INDA Fondazione website.
On 7 May the David di Donatello Awards took place in Rome, celebrating the very best achievements in Italian cinema over the past year. Unfortunately, the 70th edition was a rather muted affair. Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio rightly won the best film, and Andrea Segre’s Berlinguer La grande ambizione and Valeria Golino’s L'arte della gioia also picked up a few deserving awards, but, in general, this was another weak year in a string of weak years vis-a-vis big screen entertainment. I’m pleased to report, however, that there was a silver lining! This year’s Italian shorts were, apparently, exceptional. I’ve watched the winner, Matteo Tortone’s Domenica Sera, which explores football hooliganism, rap, toxic masculinity and desire, and can personally confirm it’s a beautiful work of art. According to other critics, though, the entire shortlist is unusually strong this year, and Nicola Sorcinelli’s sci-fi tinged La confessione, Giulia Grandinetti’s Majonezë, and Andree Lucini’s documentary Prague’s Girl have all been touted for future award success. All of the films are all available to watch on MUBI, so do check them out and help support Italian indie filmmaking while you’re at it [free trial link here if you need it].
Recipe of the week: linguine with prawns, ’nduja and ricotta
This week’s recipe is for all you seafood lovers out there. Diana Henry’s ‘Prawns with ’nduja, ricotta and linguine’ is as exquisite as you might expect from that list of ingredients, and, for my money, it’s an example of the English cook’s most inspired work. Henry reports that she invented this recipe after eating a pizza with a similar topping in Sicily recently, and her evocative description of the contrasts between the hot, spicy pork, the cool creamy cheese and the balancing sweetness of shellfish is as utterly transporting as ever. If you’ve ever enjoyed a crostino with nduja and burrata, or even, at a push, a Catalan chorizo and prawn paella, you’ll know what to expect here. This is an unashamedly goloso dish. It’s not just a quick fix but something to take time over and savour as a celebration of the contemporary flavours of South Italian cooking. You will need a Telegraph subscription for this one, I’m afraid, but don’t worry, as with the MUBI link above, there’s a free trial option for anyone who’s curious, and trust me, in this case, it’s well worth the effort to make an account. So here’s the link.
I’m Jamie Mackay, a UK-born, Italy-based writer, working at the interfaces of journalism, criticism, poetry, fiction, philosophy, travelogue and cultural-history. I set up ‘The Week in Italy’ to make a space to share a regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds, to explore politics, current affairs, books, arts and food. If you’re a regular reader, and you enjoy these updates, I hope you’ll consider becoming a supporter for EUR 5.00 per month. I like to think of it as a weekly catch-up chat over an espresso. Alternatively, if you’d like to send a one-off something, you can do so via PayPal using this link. Grazie!