Solea' 2025 Sanremo: The Festival of Mediterranean Culture
The Soleá festival, titled "Etranger," will return in September 2025: meetings, performances, and guided tours inspired by Sanremo's Belle Époque. The ninth edition, scheduled for Friday the 19th to Sunday the 21st, will focus specifically on the philosopher Walter Benjamin.
The contact and contamination between different civilizations and the landscape, both natural and architectural, are the ingredients that have characterized the event since its inception, conceived and organized by CMC/Nidodiragno Produzioni with the artistic direction of Angelo Giacobbe and the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Matuziano .
From September 19th to 21st , the influence of foreigners on the cultural and artistic development of the City of Flowers will be explored, particularly between the 19th and 20th centuries. This is why "Etranger" will be this year's key word , both from the title of Albert Camus's celebrated novel and from the name of a famous hotel in Sanremo, the Hotel des Etrangers, built in 1925 by joining two villas. They hosted the nephew and chancellor of Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, who in turn stayed at the Hotel de Nice.
The numerous events proposed by the festival will explore themes that are both evocative and absolutely topical in various ways, involving, in the itinerant and experiential approach that has always been characteristic of Soleá , various locations in the city: the centre with its magnificent period buildings, the Foce district and the Opera House of the Municipal Casino .
A special focus will be on the German philosopher, writer, and literary critic Walter Benjamin , one of the most enlightened intellectuals of the twentieth century, who spent an extended period in Sanremo in the late 1930s , staying at Villa Verde, a guesthouse then located on Via Hope and managed by Benjamin's ex-wife, Dora Kellner. The quiet of the Riviera allowed him to concentrate on his work, which was recognized posthumously and influenced important thinkers, mystics, and artists around the world. Born into a Jewish family, he committed suicide in 1940 due to Nazi persecution. Among the topics covered in Soleá's focus will be his book "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
Additionally, the 2025 event will lead residents and tourists to discover the City of Flowers' exceptional Art Nouveau architectural heritage , an extraordinary itinerary of historic residences (particularly in the city center and at the Foce) and luxury hotels, lavishly constructed for aristocratic guests (Hotel Londra, Grand Hotel & des Anglais, Royal Hotel, Hotel Bellevue, Hotel Excelsior). The new edition of Soleá will open on Friday the 19th at 5 pm with "Sanremo Liberty," a fascinating guided tour of the city's Art Nouveau buildings . The starting point will be the entrance of the Hotel Nazionale, at Via Matteotti 3, and the tour will end at the Foce accompanied by Leo Lecci , professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Genoa.
The program on Saturday 20th will start at 11am at Palazzo Bellevue , seat of the Municipality of Matuziano in Corso Cavallotti 53. It was indicated as the king's hotel as After World War II, the King of Egypt lived here, a protagonist of the society columns of that period. The public will be led on their exploration by Alessandro Giacobbe , an eclectic historian of the area.
At 5pm on Saturday 20th the guided tour “Sanremo Liberty” will be repeated , followed at 7.30pm in the elegant setting of the Grand Hotel & des Anglais , in salita Grande Albergo 134, by a characteristic “Belle Epoque Aperitif” with music by Freddy Colt Swingtet .
Sunday the 21st will be entirely dedicated to Walter Benjamin and will begin at 5:00 PM with the unveiling of a plaque in his memory at Via Hope 6 , where the aforementioned Villa Verde guesthouse once stood. The ceremony will be enhanced by musical performances by Sergio Caputo (violin) and Fabrizio Vinciguerra (guitar), featuring influences from klezmer and 1930s swing.
At 6 pm, we will delve into the German intellectual's thought with a new talk at Villa Ave Maria , at Corso degli Inglesi 601, exceptionally open to the public for the occasion . The debate will be titled "Exile, Landscape, and Depth: Benjamin in Sanremo" and will feature prominent figures who have studied the writer's life and work: Giulio Schiavoni (a German scholar at the University of Eastern Piedmont); Paolo Veziano (a historical researcher and a keen scholar of the Jewish community of Western Liguria); Marino Magliani (author of "The Child and the Islands (a Dream of Calvino)", in which he imagines the meeting, in the City of Flowers of the 1930s, between Benjamin and Italo as a child); Sergio Ariotti (artistic director of the Festival delle Colline Torinesi, author and director of "Passage", a show inspired by Benjamin's "The Passages of Paris"); Cristiana Minasi (playwright and actress, who will preview the project "Asja Lacis through Walter Benjamin," a tribute to the revolutionary Latvian actress and theater director, who had a long love affair with Benjamin); and Rosalba Ruggeri (cultural operator and RAI collaborator for cinema and theater).
On the evening of Saturday 20th at 9pm at the Teatro dell'Opera del Casinò, Sergio Ariotti, together with the author Paolo Pomati, will introduce “L'aura rubata dal ragno” , a still unpublished theatrical text, which stages an imaginary and intense dialogue between Luigi Pirandello and Walter Benjamin on the newborn seventh art, that is, cinema.
This will be followed by the premiere of "A Tea, Two Thoughts: A One-Act Play on the Riviera," a reading by Lodo Guenzi based on the text "The Aura Stolen by the Spider." Guenzi, former frontman of the band Lo Stato Sociale and an actor, will be joined by actor Stefano Annoni and Eugenio Ripepi , an artist with a strong flair for song-theater.
All Soleá events are free, subject to availability. Reservations are required for the guided tours on September 19th and 20th via Eventbrite.