Past Events

A talk by Australian economist and author Bruce Bland on celebrated architect Francesco Borromini, a leading figure in the emergence of Baroque architecture and a legendary rival of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was notoriously fascinated with Italy and set several of his plays there. Some even claim he lived in Italy and was an Italian himself. Poet Mark O’Connor brings several of these strands together in a rare public address on this topic. Mark O’Connor is a very well known Australian poet, Shakespeare and English poetry scholar, and environmentalist.

Literary historian Susannah Fullerton delighted us in August with a talk on why Italy has been such a magnet to writers over the centuries.

A presentation by a delegation of the city of Foligno of a faithful replica of the first printed edition in 1472 of the Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri. On April 11th 1472, the city of Foligno (Umbria region) saw the first ever printed edition of Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia. The printing was carried out by the master printer Johann Numeister, a pupil of Gutenberg, with the collaboration of the Foligno minter Emiliano Orfini. Why exactly in Foligno? What kind of…

No appreciation of Italian language and culture could be complete without an understanding of historic Rome and the ways of the ancient Romans. The extremely-rich archaeology of Rome provides extensive information on how the ancient Romans lived, governed, and made community decisions on their civic and private amenities. Richard Mann is a Sydney-based architect with extensive international experience. His practice at Ecosystem Architecture employs principles of design and building that have foundations in Roman times and beyond. Richard has studied…

Dr. Alice Loda, a Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, talked about immigrants' poetry in Italy. Traditionally a country of emigration, over the past four decades it also increasingly became one of destination and transit. Her talk described the progressive emerging of migrant voices in contemporary Italian literature, and explored their positioning within the relevant literary debate. It then presented and analysed a selection of works produced in Italian by authors born in non-Italophone countries, focusing…