Urbs Scripta, the first festival dedicated to historic Venetian graffiti, is born

From Thursday, April 13 to Sunday, April 16, Urbs Scripta, the first festival dedicated to historic Venetian graffiti, will be held in Venice. It is an opportunity to discover their places and meanings, covering six hundred years of history, from the end of the 14th century to after World War II. The Graffiti Festival, which has the support of the Municipality of Venice and the Veneto Region, was presented at Cà Farsetti by the president of the City Council, Ermelinda Damiano, together with writer Alberto Toso Fei and historian and popularizer Desi Marangon, former authors of the volume I graffiti di Venezia (Lineadacqua, 2022), who have the artistic and scientific direction.

“The history of the city also passes through signs, grooves, graffiti of past centuries that tell, through the stones of Venice, what the island has experienced and that today, through this Festival, we re-propose in a contemporary key. The attention of this Municipal Administration to all initiatives that fall of the furrow of culture is always high because the goal is to enhance and publicize the prestigious history of the Serenissima, which still has a lot to tell,” saidPresident Damiano. “It is for this reason that events such as these are carried out with the desire to involve citizens to make them protagonists of their city, in the first person, through dedicated itineraries that accompany them to get to know up close the history that has made this city great in the world. Everyone will feel like a protagonist of this history, always respecting the city and its beauty.”

Ships, chronicles, games, human figures; slogans for the election of doges or lamentations of prisoners; games, names, crosses and dates. An extraordinary set of presidia of memory, scattered all along Venice and its islands in churches, palaces, on monuments, which is part of the living history left on the stones by ordinary people, who in telling their stories suddenly make the monuments of the city bearers of deeper and different meanings, yet never contradicting the far more sumptuous history written by doges, artists, poetesses, queens and sea captains at the conquest of the East.

The Venetian Graffiti Festival will include sessions at Fontego dei Tedeschi, the Doge’s Palace and Lazzaretto Nuovo (the latter led by Professor Francesca Malagnini of the University for Foreigners of Perugia, who has written two volumes on Venetian Lazzarettos). A conference at the Ateneo Veneto in which Professor Carlo Tedeschi of the University of Chieti, one of the leading experts on historical graffiti, is scheduled to speak, as well as a debate on the theme of the occupation of public spaces in cities, in addition to a documentary exhibition, with photographs by Simone Padovani, created thanks to the contribution of the Venice Foundation. The visits are organized in collaboration with T -Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Palazzo Ducale and the Venetian Lazzaretti. An additional tactile experience, led by Laura Bumbalova, will be dedicated to the blind. A round table discussion (with the participation of Francesca Salatin, IUAV) is also planned for the identification of a national restoration protocol aimed at the preservation of historic graffiti, presidia of memory that are in danger of disappearing, deprived as they currently are of any legislative protection.

There will also be room for an unprecedented treasure hunt along the calli that, starting from the Procuratie Vecchie, home of The Human Safety Net, will allow participants to learn about and have fun. The festival, which is part of a larger public history project, also enjoys the patronage of the Private Foreign Committees for Venice and Europa Nostra. Urbs Scripta is also the title of a publication (produced by Editoriale Programma) that aims to provide an original look at graffiti, perceived no longer as anthropogenic damage or an act of vandalism but as a historical source in its own right, fundamental to rewriting a history from below and of those who until now have had no voice.

“Ancient graffiti is indeed becoming more and more ’pop,’ on social media, through publications aimed at popularization, in the press,” said Alberto Toso Fei. “Preserving, studying, understanding and spreading the knowledge of Venetian graffiti means listening to a past that is already all there.”

“Urbs Scripta,” added Desi Marangon, “thus places a further piece to a public history project that aims to write a history from below, made up of testimonies left on the walls by ordinary people, and that sees history as a participatory and collective project, to which everyone can contribute thanks to the mediation of those who have made history and storytelling their profession.”

Visits are free with reservations required at the link: https://albertotosofei.it

The program can be viewed here.

Urbs Scripta, the first festival dedicated to historic Venetian graffiti, is born

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