The return of the urban festival celebrating the link between heritage and creativity

@ various locations
from 4 to June 9, 2024

From 4 to 9 June, the second edition of Bologna Portici Festival. The program is online!

The homage of the artists ‘born’ in Bologna to a unique city and its traditions.

Four cultural districts, more than 60 events and the story in music, words and dance of what makes it special.

From Via Zamboni to the Portici di San Luca, passing through Piazza Maggiore, Piazza della Pace and the Certosa Cemetery, to the “Treno della Barca: six days of events, four districts and a single festival.

It's exciting to see how the whole city participates in the joy of celebrating the UNESCO World Heritage arcades; I am struck by how much of a living heritage it is, which Bolognese people truly love and feel their identity.

These are the words spoken by the Deputy Director of UNESCO last May 18 when she unveiled the World Heritage Portici plaque that stands out on Palazzo d'Accursio. And they are also the essence and the engine that animates the second edition of Bologna Portici Festival, the great urban festival launched in 2023 by the City of Bologna to celebrate the prestigious recognition of one of its most characteristic and unique elements in the world, enhancing the combination of heritage and creativity and the 'inspiring' role that even the city landscape plays on the artistic dimension and cultural. A public and private space together, shelter and openness, the arcades are a place of exchange and relationship and there are those who think that in some way they have helped to shape the character of Bolognese people over the centuries and also of the artists who started here or who have found their dimension in the city.

This year the Festival is a tribute to this feeling, to this recognition of being children - natural or acquired - of a special city, which knows how to keep tradition and innovation together, that knows how to open up to the world without distorting itself, that knows how to recognize its beauty and take care of it.

A city that stays inside you, as stated by many of the artists who will make the 2024 edition of the festival special and who will star in original productions, designed and created ad hoc to celebrate this occasion and therefore 'unique'.

From the suggestive “Sinfonia sospesa per pianoforte e bolle (Suspended Symphony for Piano and Bubbles)” that mixes the impalpability of emotions in a game of colors, images and sounds to aerial dance performances in the unique scenography of the Certosa in the evening, from the evening-event with the big names of Bolognese and Italian pop music to the performance of the first violin of the Teatro alla Scala Laura Marzadori on the big stage of Piazza Maggiore to the talks in Piazza Rossini with the protagonists of culture, literature, journalism and theater, are there are many artists who will return their view of Bologna and their homage to the city through music, stories and dances.

Six days, more than 60 appointments including concerts, talks, workshops, guided tours, theater and dance shows, site-specific performances and exhibitions, which will animate four districts of the city: starting with Via Zamboni, the heart of the university citadel that starts from the two Towers - another extraordinary urban heritage to protect and care for - to the great stage of Piazza Maggiore, which will host events dedicated to pop and classical music. From the center to the first suburbs: the party along the modern arcades of the “Treno della Barca”, the dance floor in Piazza della Pace on which the tradition of “Filuzzi” and modern and contemporary dance will alternate, up to the Certosa Monumental Cemetery with evening aerial and acrobatic dance performances performed in a unique setting, with the Portici di San Luca as a background. Kilometers of arcades, once again protagonists of “Lights in San Luca”, an impressive new artistic project wanted by Cesare Cremonini, with the participation of the German artist

Philipp Frank. From 5 to 9 June, from dusk to dawn.

>> Programma (ITA) in pdf

>> pdf Program (EN) 

>> Comunicato stampa completo (ITA)