Italian cuisine, arts and style swept Sofia once again! This time, in the city of Plovdiv as well. The Italian Festival, which by tradition, is held at the same time in many countries across the world, continued for a whole month here, from May 18th to June 17th. It was Italy’s Embassy, the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade and the Italian Cultural Centre in Bulgaria, which organized the events in the fields of cinema, fine arts, culinary art, design and fashion. The festival aims at getting Bulgarian public closer to everything bearing the Made in Italy trademark, as well as to bring to the fore the willingness to boost the cooperation between the two countries in the name of mutual progress and future. In this respect, we approached H.E. Mr. Giovan B. Campagnola, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Italy, with several questions.

Your Excellency, the traditional Italian Festival kicked off for a second time here. What did inspire you to organize it once again and what is the message, you convey to Bulgarians, via the Festival?
The first edition of the Italian Festival will be remembered for the lasting and ever so positive response to the initiatives it promotes in line with arts, culture, performances, fashion and cuisine. Yet most of all, the results from the commercial and cultural relations, from the last year’s events in the framework of the celebrations, occasioned by our wonderful bilateral relations facilitated the success, which surpassed all expectations. It is yet another and a strong motive to come up once again in line with the National Day of Italy, the Day of the Republic, June 2, with a series of events, the name and nature of which proved to be a synonym of the Made in Italy trademark and the Italian fashion of life. The latter have been welcomed and appreciated in Bulgaria better than elsewhere. We organized the Italian Festival with the conviction that its message will bring even closer our culture and arts, our technologies and products to the Bulgarian public. The Festival is also an expression of our openness and understanding, that Bulgaria is a strategic partner, displaying as well our willingness to cooperate with each other for the general welfare.

The new accent this year was put on the promotion of Italian trends in furniture design. Nowadays, Italy excels in this respect. How did you get Bulgarian public familiarized with your achievements?
The novelty at this year’s edition of the Festival was the promotion of traditional quality and constant inventiveness in the field of Italian furniture design. Prof. Alessandro Guerriero, President of the New Academy of Fine Arts (NABA), based in Milan, held a seminar on the topic. In order to grasp the scope of the personality of Prof. Guerriero, it is enough for one to know that his works are on display in the most renowned museums of modern art, with that in Kyoto (Japan), at the Twentieth Century Design Collection in New York and the Metropolitan, at the Museum fßr Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, at Groningen Museum, the Netherlands, in Louisiana, Dusseldorf and Boston among others. The architect teaches modern design at the Polytechnic Institute in Milan, at the universities in Palermo, Florence, Boston, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Dallas, Mexico City, etc. In 1982, Prof. Alessandro Guerriero won the Golden Compass for his scientific researches in the domain of design. We thought over a more unconventional organization of the promotion of the sector so as to offer our guests the opportunity to make a familiarizing tour of the biggest and most qualified furniture galleries in Sofia.