From September 9th to 13th in Mantua, Festivaletteratura celebrates its thirtieth edition and once again transforms squares, palaces, churches, and courtyards into meeting places for writers and readers.
But the festival is also an opportunity to discover one of Italy’s most fascinating cities of art, where the Gonzaga family’s great legacy meets contemporary culture. This edition has a particular significance. Festivaletteratura turns thirty. Thirty years of books, meetings, and ideas When Festivaletteratura was born in 1997, it was probably difficult to imagine how deeply it would enter Mantua’s cultural identity.
The intuition was simple and at the same time revolutionary: to create a festival where writers and readers could meet directly and where literature would emerge from the places traditionally reserved for insiders. Not a book fair. Not simply a succession of presentations. A festival. The difference was substantial. It meant turning reading into a collective experience. It meant putting authors and audiences in the same space. It meant allowing a conversation born around a novel to expand to history, science, politics, society, music, the environment, and the big questions of the present.
And it is precisely this opening that has allowed Festivaletteratura to go through three decades while continuing to renew itself. Mantua becomes an open-air library During the days of the Festival, something special happens. The geography of the city changes. Piazza Sordello is no longer just one of Italy’s great monumental squares. It becomes a meeting place. Piazza Alberti welcomes readers and conversations. Palaces, courtyards, churches and spaces normally intended for other functions enter the cultural map of the Festival. People pass through Mantua with the program in hand. They run to a meeting. They stop for coffee. They discuss a newly discovered book.
They are waiting for an author. They enter a bookshop Then they set off again towards the next appointment. It is a particular form of cultural tourism. The city is not simply visited. It is lived. The thirtieth Festival For the 2026 edition, Festivaletteratura has built a particularly broad program, bringing together hundreds of Italian and international guests. Literature, of course, but also science, journalism, history, poetry, current affairs, the environment, education, music, and new languages. The 30-year program itself became a small 240-page book. A detail that tells well the dimension reached by the demonstration.
To guide the audience, thematic paths have also been identified that connect different events through common narrative threads. It’s an interesting choice. Because after thirty years, Festivaletteratura doesn’t simply celebrate what has been. He continues to question how to build new ways of reading, listening, and participating. From Alessandro Barbero to Tim Berners-Lee, the strength of Festivaletteratura has always been its ability to bring different worlds together. In its thirteenth anniversary edition, the program brings together personalities from literature, culture, research, and contemporary debate. Numerous guests include Alessandro Barbero, Niccolò Ammaniti, Stefano Bartezzaghi, Simon Armitage, Nathacha Appanah, Federico Buffa, and Tim Berners-Lee. Different names and disciplines that tell the very nature of the Festival. Literature is not considered an enclosure here. It’s rather a starting point. The 2026 edition also looks behind the scenes of cultural production. With the Fare Festival project, the event opens up part of its organizational and creative laboratory, demonstrating how much work exists behind what the public sees for five days. Communication, design, publishing, archives, digital productions, and cultural organization become matters of comparison.
It is a significant step especially on the thirtieth anniversary. Because a cultural festival doesn’t live solely on the names on the program. It lives off the people who build it. And Festivaletteratura has always had a particular characteristic: participation. But the thirtieth anniversary also invites us to look beyond the program.
Festivaletteratura demonstrates that culture and territory can mutually strengthen each other. That a book can become a reason for travel. That a Renaissance palace can once again become a contemporary space. That a square can transform into a community of readers. And that a relatively small city can become an international meeting point without losing its identity. Perhaps this is the best way to experience Festivaletteratura. Choosing the authors we want to listen to.
