The ‘Libridine’ festival is underway, meetings and readings from the center to the outskirts of Rome

Forty bookshops spread across the territory of Rome and its province, in particular in the peripheral areas of the city – including Centocelle, Ostia, Tor Bella Monaca, Torre Maura, Tiburtina and Infernetto – as well as in the historic centre. Book presentations, debates, readings with the aim of enhancing the role of independent bookshops as points of reference and aggregation in the social panorama of the urban fabric. It’s ‘Libridine. The widespread bookshop festival, scheduled from 22nd to 24th November, is the initiative organized by the Rome Chamber of Commerce and carried out thanks to the support of the main trade associations and confederations.

At the center of the event, in its first edition, there will be appointments and events organized by individual bookshops intended to attract a large number of readers. The objective, explained the president of the Rome Chamber of Commerce Lorenzo Tagliavanti during the presentation of the initiative, is to “enhance a great resource, that of books. Rome is traditionally a city of good reading, but it can still be done a lot. 5% of the Chamber of Commerce’s budget – Tagliavanti then recalled – is aimed at culture, we are present in all the cultural institutions of the city including the Opera Theatre, the Film Festival and the Roma Vive Auditorium of culture: they are there 180 thousand people working in the various cultural sectors, 14% of the wealth produced in the city comes from this sector”.

“Bookstores are going through a bit of a difficult time” also due to “the transformation that the historic center in particular is undergoing”, underlined Tiziana Barone, president of Cna Comunicazione e advanced tertiary sector Rome, thus motivating the choice to create a widespread festival . Transformation “which penalizes small shops and small independent bookstores”. Ilaria Milana, president of Ali Confommercio Roma, is also on the same line. The idea is to hold this event “widely across the territory, from the center to the suburbs and in the province”. The ambition is that “it becomes a fixed event for all Romans”, he concluded.