The real prize for Wanna Marchi and Stefania Nobile is the set design

Let us set aside, for once, the lamentations about the decline of Italian culture. The International Culture Prize awarded to Wanna Marchi and Stefania Nobile tells us almost nothing about the state of Italian literature, art or intellectuals. It tells us something much simpler – and probably more interesting – about marketing, the commercial value of institutions, and the extraordinary ability of some people to immediately recognise a promotional opportunity when it presents itself.

The award in question is a private initiative, now in its second year, conceived by the publisher Alessandro Gian Maria Ferri together with Silvestro Mucillo. Stefania Nobile received it for her book "Vendere… cara la pelle"; Wanna Marchi for her cookery book "La verità è che io cucino così. ‘Qui non si pesa niente: l’unica misura è l’amore’. Roma Capitale did not award either of them and does not appear to have sponsored the event. However, the ceremony took place on 23 September in the Sala della Protomoteca at the Campidoglio, with over two hundred guests and city councillor Dario Nanni opening the event.

It is of little consequence if a private individual chooses to invent an award and bestow it upon Wanna Marchi. They can call it the International Prize for Culture, the Universal Prize for Literature or whatever takes their fancy. The authority of a private award depends on the authority it manages to establish, and the Italian awards scene has long provided ample material to build up immunity against the awe inspired by plaques, medals, various trinkets and grandiose titles.

I am not particularly interested in determining whether Wanna Marchi has the right to write a recipe book or Stefania Nobile an autobiography. Of course they do. They are free to publish books and receive accolades from whoever chooses to bestow them. Turning this into a sort of perpetual moral ban would be a rather tedious form of sanctimoniousness, as well as giving the two protagonists the role they know best how to play: that of the victims of the self-righteous.

What remains is bad taste, which is as unrestricted as the award itself. In the case of Stefania Nobile, there is also an element that makes the rhetoric of rehabilitation – following the settling of one’s debt to the law – particularly distasteful. The legal proceedings did not end with the convictions relating to teleshopping, for which Nobile completed her sentence in 2013. In October 2025, the judge for preliminary investigations in Milan ratified a plea bargain involving a three-year sentence in the case concerning Gintoneria and the La Malmaison private club; Nobile was permitted to carry out community service as a means of serving her sentence.

The award comes less than a year later. This, too, of course, does not prevent anyone from presenting her with a statuette. It at least spares us the comforting fairy tale of the former sinner who, after many years, returns to society through culture.

Because, in this story, the Campidoglio is not simply the venue where an event was held. The Sala della Protomoteca is an institutional hall, and its value to event organisers lies precisely in this. A photograph taken there is worth more than the same photograph taken in a hotel conference room. An award presented there acquires a certain prestige that its organiser, on their own, would have to build up over the years. Even the phrase used to present the event, ‘culture takes the Capitol by storm’, shows that this value was perfectly understood.

Wanna Marchi understood this better than anyone else.

In the video published after the award ceremony, he recalled the journey “from prison to the Campidoglio” and remarked that “life is strange”. It is a far more astute remark than many of the indignant comments that have appeared in recent hours, because it pinpointed exactly what had happened. The symbolic power of the evening did not stem from the International Culture Prize. It stemmed from the Campidoglio.

Had the same plaque been presented to Wanna Marchi at a conference centre on the Tiburtina, no one would have been able to recount her journey from prison to the Campidoglio. It is likely that no major newspaper would have covered it. The event would have received the same level of media attention as the second edition of a private award organised by a publisher little known to the general public.

The new headquarters changed everything.

This is demonstrated even more clearly by Stefania Nobile, who responded to the criticism first with “Get over it”, then “Go and sulk”, culminating in the magnificent statement that “we are culture, not Pirandello”. She added a sentence that is worth more than any press release: “The more you talk, the more you discredit us, and the higher we’ll rise”.

There is no need to drag Pirandello into this. Nobile is describing a basic marketing mechanism, and he is doing so with remarkable clarity. Controversy generates attention; attention generates visibility; and visibility increases the commercial value of those involved. Every scandalised article becomes part of the promotional campaign. Every outraged person who shares the photograph of the award ceremony contributes to its circulation. From this point of view, ‘get over it’ is a perfectly coherent response.

That is why I find it rather pointless to be scandalised that an award called the ‘Culture’ prize has gone to Wanna Marchi. The name of a private award does not transform its recipient into Benedetto Croce, and there is no ministry tasked with certifying the nobility of such honours. If the organisers deemed it worthwhile to honour Marchi and Nobile, they made a choice that ensured their event received a level of attention they would have struggled to achieve had they honoured some obscure author of a good essay. From their point of view, the operation worked a treat.

Roma Capitale stipulates that, in order to secure a Capitoline Hall, an accountability form and a report describing ‘the content, speakers, participants and the programme of the event’ must be submitted. The documentation is processed by the Mayor’s Office and the Internal Ceremonial Department. Councillor Dario Nanni, who had supported the request for the hall, stated after the controversy erupted that he was unaware that Wanna Marchi and Stefania Nobile would be among the award recipients, adding that, had he known, he would not have supported the request.

At this stage, the issue is far less philosophical than it seems. One need only look at the documents submitted to secure the venue and see what they contained. If the names of Marchi and Nobile did not appear in them, it will be interesting to find out when they were added to the programme. If they did appear, it becomes interesting to know the process through which authorisation was granted. There is no need for grand speeches on Western decline: what is needed are the documents.

There remains, however, a general issue, which applies regardless of how things turned out this time. Institutional halls are not merely public buildings equipped with chairs. They contain a far more valuable intangible asset: the reputation of the institution to which they belong. Anyone organising an event at the Campidoglio borrows a part of that reputation, even when the City Council specifies that it is not the organiser and even when there is no formal sponsorship.

That is precisely what happened here. The International Culture Award was presented in the “prestigious Sala della Protomoteca”. The photographs showed Wanna Marchi and Stefania Nobile inside one of the capital’s most iconic venues. Marchi immediately transformed that setting into her own personal narrative: from prison to the Campidoglio.

Go on, give her an award. Give her as many as they care to invent. Freedom also includes the freedom to celebrate people whom others find unpresentable, and it includes the right to create awards in very poor taste.

The Campidoglio is a different matter, because it belongs to everyone and because its name holds a value that can be converted into private prestige.

Wanna Marchi has spent her professional life learning just how important the presentation of what you sell is. On this occasion, the presentation was outstanding. It was provided, for one evening, by the Campidoglio.