The Fantastico Medioevo (Fantastic Middle Ages) festival, a project promoted by the Presidency of the Basilicata Regional Council and coordinated by the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation, is coming to Matera.
The literary gatherings, opened with greetings from the Foundation's director, Rita Orlando, begin at 7:00 PM in the APT Basilicata Open Space, with the presentation of the book "Where are you? Wherever you are, stories" (Hermaion editions, 2026) by Paolo Albano, president of the Letti di Sera Association. Professor Franco Vitelli and essayist Vincenzo Viti will be in conversation with the author, under the guidance of Simona Bonito, Councilor for Equality for the Province of Potenza, who will also curate the readings. Driven by the desire to reaffirm the "irremediable beauty of Basilicata, at the heart of Southern Italy, in the heart of the Mediterranean," from which he feels he was born, Albano has collected in this volume what he has written, sometimes rewritten, over the past two years and more, marked by a strong and unexpected change in his life. And "in this obscenities of time, which are disrupted every day, also by the masters of the world who, almost always, have no reason, no reason at all, to be so, the broom and the kaleidoscope are saved."
At 7:45 PM, Elena Guerri dall'Oro, Coordinator of the Anniversaries of National Interest Mission Unit at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, will present her book "Roma Nord. Profondo nero" (Pioda Imaging, 2024). In conversation with the author will be Gianpiero Perri, Chief of Staff to the President of the Basilicata Regional Council, and Francesca Cristallo, Vice President of the Matera Film Festival, under the guidance of Paolo Albano, accompanied by readings by journalist Annamaria Sodano. The book, published ten years after the previous one, "Roma Nord," continues the choral saga of the Roman bourgeoisie in the "good neighborhoods" of Olgiata, Trieste, and Parioli. The three families—the Gianninis, the Tabaccis, and the Teodoris—are recounted by the author as a snapshot of a society at the crossroads of modern history.
At 8:30 PM, historian, writer, and popularizer Alessandro Vanoli will present "The Story of Luke the Convert. The Saracens in Pietrapertosa," one of the 11 volumes in the Fantastico Medioevo series, published with Editori Laterza, dedicated to the places, characters, and events of the Middle Ages in Basilicata. The author will be in conversation with Francesca Sogliani, full professor of Christian and Medieval Archaeology at the Department for Humanistic, Scientific and Social Innovation (DIUSS) and the School of Specialization in Archaeological Heritage at the University of Basilicata.
Following the faint traces left by history, the book reconstructs a human and cultural landscape where silent mountains, porous Greek and Norman borders, Saracen routes, and villages suspended between fear and wonder intertwine in an unexpected mosaic. It is the portrait of a region where languages, religions, and identities brush against each other, merge, and clash: an interior Mediterranean where nothing stands still and no one is truly what they seem. At the end of the 10th century, when Lucania was a restless frontier between East and West, a name emerges from the folds of a 12th-century document: Luke, perhaps a Greek, certainly a man suspended between worlds. Converted from the ancient Christian faith to Islam, his passage left devastation rippling through Tricarico and Pietrapertosa. But who was this "renegade"? An adventurer? An emissary? A survivor forced to make the most extreme choices?
