ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The La Sapienza University of Rome has promoted a day of study dedicated to Paolo Rossi, sixty years after his tragic death at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. The initiative aims to offer a shared opportunity of reflection on a story that profoundly marked the history of the University and, more generally, the civil conscience of the country.
“The story of Paolo Rossi does not belong only to the past and remembering it here today in his university is not a formal exercise – says Rector Antonella Polimeni – Preserving its memory defines the way in which the Sapienza community chooses to recognize and act in the present, keeping together the differences without transforming them into distance and expressing a mature relationship with its own past. Memory is our responsibility because a mature community does not choose what to remember, but assumes its history in its entirety, with the bright and the most painful pages, also recognizing the moments when the institution was not up to. The memory is also our method and for this reason I want to thank those with their daily commitment, through research and archive documentation, have kept in our history also the story of Paul, a 19-year-old boy, a student of architecture, a scout, a committed young man, part of a generation who sought more democracy in the university and in the country”.
The day is divided into two moments that correspond to a twofold path: on the one hand, the historical and scientific study entrusted to the contribution of scholars and scholars, starting from the sources contained in the Historical Archive of Wisdom and the private archive of the Rossi family; on the other, the recognition of the value of public memory, through the voices of those who have known it and of those who, over the years, have kept its memory.
The activities began at 9.30 p.m., at the Aula Organi collegiali of the Palazzo del Rettorato, with the greetings of the Director Antonella Polimeni, who followed those of the Presidi Oreste Carpenzano of the Faculty of Architecture and Arianna Punzi of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. To open the speeches, Umberto Gentiloni, professor of contemporary history and scientific coordinator of the project, who offers new ideas of research on the figure of Paolo Rossi, on the historical context of his killing and on the meaning that this story continues to assume in the history of the university and Italian society.
In the afternoon, at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, a round table is planned to remind Paolo Rossi through direct testimonies of the audience present in the classroom, starting from that of his sister Orietta. The initiative brings together historical research and public memory, bringing attention to a story that continues today to question the University on the issues of political violence and civil commitment.
The event is realized in collaboration with the Laboratory of Contemporary History and with the patronage of the Roman Institute for the history of Italy from fascism to the Resistance.
– Photo press office University La Sapienza –
(ITALPRESS).
