Qua! The Via Quarenghi Celebration
30 September
via Quarenghi, Bergamo
Visuals, installations, art, music, dance, theatre, fashion, flavours, and workshops for children. “QUA! The Via Quarenghi Celebration” is the time for a rediscovery crossing together the life, dreams, and designs of the great architect Giacomo Quarenghi with the valorisation of the richness and vitality emerging from an environment in which different cultures and traditions coexist and dialogue. The municipal department for culture, within the context of the rich schedule of appointments fostered by the city of Bergamo throughout the year in celebration of Quarenghi’s bicentenary, wishes to draw new attention to Via Quarenghi. A stone’s throw from the city centre, but often left on the margins by visitors, this street actually reveals some unexpected surprises. As if in a singular play of mirrors, the journey of those coming to Via Quarenghi from far away countries mingles with that undertaken by the architect when he left for Saint Petersburg. He too travelled across different cultures, carrying with him his neoclassical taste far from its Italian origins to spread it across Europe. The Via Quarenghi Celebration thus wishes to be an invitation to explore and experience this little known part of the city, which is nonetheless rich in history and in places which are bound to amaze. The active participation of local civic and cultural associations, as well as of the street’s shopkeepers, and the availability of its inhabitants to open the gates of private houses and courtyards, has allowed for the creation of a program which ranges from exhibitions to theatre readings, from cinema to food samplings, from puppet-shows to interactive tours. As a special exception for this occasion of shared celebration, the street will be closed to traffic. This will be an evening to spend together, adults and children, and which will also give Via Quarenghi a new and permanent urban furnishing, conceived by the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts and dedicated to the figure of Giacomo Quarenghi: thanks to cutting-edge augmented reality technologies, the route will reveal lost or never finally built architectural features designed by the great neoclassical architect, who emigrated to Russia with the dream of bettering his life.
www.comune.bergamo.it