Today, the Second Day of the "Festival del Mediterraneo – Fondazione Treccani Cultura"

After the emotional intensity of the opening night, the Festival del Mediterraneo – promoted by Fondazione Treccani Cultura – returns on Friday, 11 July 2025, with a second evening rich in emotion, marked by listening, memory, and the embodied power of words. Once again, the evocative ex Convento degli Agostiniani in Lecce sets the stage—a symbolic crossroads of cultures and a place of deep resonance.

At 7:00 PM, the evening opens with a much-anticipated conversation between Syrian poet Nouri Al-Jarrah—one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Arabic poetry—and Monica Ruocco, scholar of comparative literature and Mediterranean cultures. Their dialogue, titled “What It Means to Be a Poet of the Eastern Mediterranean: The Rhetoric of a Universal Hymn”, will be translated by Fatima Sai and will lead the audience through a poetic and political journey across exile, myth, and resistance. In Al-Jarrah’s verses, personal memory merges with collective history; historical tragedy becomes symbolic language; poetry becomes a bridge between shores.

At 9:00 PM, words give way to music. Teresa De Sio, accompanied by guitarist Sasà Flauto, presents an intimate and evocative musical reading. Her voice, supported by Flauto’s essential and vibrant notes, gives life to stories of women, migration, resistance, and longing. Weaving sound and verse, her performance restores to the Mediterranean its most authentic and popular soul. Suspended between poetry and song, De Sio’s act becomes a collective tale, a civic testimony, a shared ritual of emotion and listening.

This second evening marks the conclusion of the Festival del Mediterraneo, which over two days transformed the ex Convento degli Agostiniani into a space of deep listening and shared imagination. A festival that brought together poets, musicians, scholars, and citizens around a simple and radical idea: that the Mediterranean, in all its complexity, remains a space where meaning, connection, and future can still be forged.

The initiative took place as part of Armonie del Mediterraneo, promoted by the Comune di Lecce, with scientific and operational coordination by the Agenzia per il Patrimonio Culturale Euromediterraneo, and with the support of TAP – Trans Adriatic Pipeline, Lead Supporter of the project. From 4 to 20 July, Lecce becomes a Mediterranean city—an active hub of encounters, exchanges, and storytelling. A cultural geography takes shape, where the sea does not divide but connects, and culture becomes a daily practice of dialogue, relationship, and vision.

Armonie del Mediterraneo is more than a festival—it is a project that restores the sea’s deepest soul. An invitation to recognize ourselves in a collective, complex, and layered identity, shaped by migrations and returns, oral traditions and written texts, ancient myths and contemporary wounds. A living narrative built through the power of words, music, and the unifying force of the arts.