Writers and Milan

Literary routes and Literary sites.

Flirting with Literature? That’s your ideal tour.

An engaging literary Milan.  Book now

The city’s literary and cultural debate has always been fostered by chief national publishing houses and important newspapers having their home in Milan.

During the XVIII century Milan was a mandatory stop over on the so-called Grand Tour d’Italie, the educational journey for young European aristocrats.
In the second half of the century, Milan became a major centre of the Enlightenment and a literary salon of undisputed importance, while later, it turned into the subject of many travel accounts and also the backdrop for novels and stories.

In the XIX century writers like Ugo Foscolo or Alessandro Manzoni speak of Milan in their intense pages, the former in The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis the latter in the famous novel The Betrothed.
Alongside them is a list of visiting foreign authors, Stendhal, George Byron, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Henry James.
The following century welcomed Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway who depicted the city centre in a passage of Farewell to Arms.  Contact Barbara Quarello now

The XX century testified leading figures in poetry and literature, such as Carlo Emilio Gadda, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Alberto Savinio, Giovannino Guareschi, the three Nobel prize winners Salvatore Quasimodo, Eugenio Montale and Dario Fo or Umberto Eco the author of the The Name of the Rose.

Giorgio Scerbanenco is considered to be the father of the Italian style mystery novel, his best novels are often described as Milano centric because they barely refer to other Italian cities or regions.
More recently Andrea Pinketts is the innovator of the hard-boiled detective story.

Wandering around the city between a coffee break and a little treat, we will see where the authors listed so far have lived, the sites they frequented, the places described in their novels.
I will make these authors come alive. After all, a book is forever.

Duration: 4 hours.