The Bridge over the Strait put to the test of myth. Optical illusions, violence and beauty, D’Arrigo and Consolo, and Giulio Ferroni’s “Panegirico”

So much for glorious and fabulous times. A unified Italy wanted to get to know itself better and discovered a disaster: a country that was poor, sick and plagued by infant mortality. The two major investigations into the lives of peasants and the sanitary conditions in the municipalities

Clark Gable smokes three packets of cigarettes a day. Of Monty Clift, Marilyn Monroe will say: “He’s the only person I know who’s in a worse state than me”. The inexorable decline of fading stars in The Misfits

Discussing God with friends while eating piadina and kebabs, admiring the ‘Ecce homo’, visiting exhibitions and listening to the Pope. The deeper meaning of the Rimini Meeting, which is neither a political event nor a retreat

“Cosmopolitan and stateless”: the German right attacks the Weimar School and its legacy, turning the battle against “degenerate” art into a threat to cultural freedom

They are not found in high society; they do not turn the other cheek, and they are the harbingers of what we do not want to see.

The city wants its Monte; the right and left are joining forces in the battle for independence. The hypocrisy (and vested interests) behind municipalism

It was a joke, they say. Certainly not for the people who were vilified and marginalised. Censorship, trigger warnings and cultural appropriation, from Shakespeare to Beethoven, from Little Red Riding Hood to Picasso. Meanwhile, Trump expresses his gratitude

It seems ordinary and inexhaustible, the perfect metaphor for infinity. Yet today it is the second most consumed (and contested) natural resource in the world. Artificial islands, mafias and summer catchphrases