Foreword

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:04:39 +0000
Num. 2

The favourable response to the fìrst number of Ferrara. Voci di una città has persuaded us to carry on with this experiment whose aim is to make known the city of Ferrara in all its complexity, which is in harmonious balance between the unforgettable cultural inheritance and the pulsating drive of a modern city abreast of the times.
The articles, notes, and the other material contained in this issue combine to form a review of Ferrara's cultural and business life as well as an evocation of the identity and memory of the city, as illustrated in articles by Venturi, Pazzi, and Tumiati.

The prospects for the management and restoration of the city that have been opened up by the town council's purchase of Casa Minerbi, a monument of exceptional artistic value with its extraordinary cycle of frescoes, are dealt with in Ranieri Varese's critical analysis.
Casa Minerbi, meanwhile, will soon become an established addition to the city's list of museums and is also set to become the seat of the Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali, which has been encharged by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara with the task of compiling and making a scientific study of the body of the Este illuminated manuscripts, the fìrst volume of which has just been published. The fulcrum of this important project will be the facsimile edition of Borso d'Este's Bible, accompanied by a volume of essays.

In these months, Ferrara will be offering a wide range of cultural events including the forthcoming Gauguin exhibition and the preparation of the Museo Antonioni, the city's worthy act of homage to its most illustrious director and peerless master of the cinematographic arts. The Foundation has successfully realized its wish to contribute to all these initiatives, reported in detail in this issue of the magazine, not only on a financial level but also by means of a far-sighted selection process aimed at garnering the best that Ferrara can express.

Nor should we forget the attention the magazine has devoted to the city's economic life, as explained in Benassi's essay on the experimental model for economic development conceived by the Berco company and some of its technical staff, assisted by the local authorities, and Vittorio Emiliani's contribution on the potential of the Po Delta Nature Reserve, as well as the first part of the study carried out by Patrizio Bianchi on the relationships between economics and culture.

Basically, this second issue of the magazine is intended to offer readers the image of a city that has not contented itself with the misty memory - however satisfying it may be - of a great past, but is actively seeking to measure and compare itself with that past and that tradition while remaining fìrmly fixed in the modern world.

Alfredo Santini