UMBERTO ECO'S ALESSANDRIA

12 November 2025 - 31 December 2026

Alessandria is much more than Umberto Eco's birthplace: it is the secret matrix of his view of the world.
In this low-lying city, suspended between fog and light, between Piedmontese pragmatism and the irony of the provincial person, the young Eco learned to interpret the signs of reality - those minute details which would later become the heart of his semiotics and his narrative.
Among the streets and squares of the historic center, the future author of The name of the Rose refined his love for books, words and the ironic intelligence of language. Alessandria offered him his first thinking lab: the school, the library, the squares, the voices of a community which he curiously observed and made this great intellectual so proud of his origins.
Today, returning to these places of Eco means rediscovering the soul of a city which was able to shape one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century. A journey through memory and knowledge, where Alessandria becomes text, map and symbol: a small world to interpret with the same amazement of who, like Eco, has always believed that every place holds a meaning just waiting to be discovered.

Guided tour with stops at the most significant sites of the life of Umberto Eco in the city:

Piazza Matteotti- Liceo Classico former Plana now dedicated to Umberto Eco
Piazza della Libertà - the Mosaics by Severini
Piazza Duomo - Gagliaudo Aulari, the peasant hero
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the library and the monument to Eco by Marco Lodola
Piazza Valfré - war and displacement
Via Verdi - the Supercinema
Piazzetta della Lega - meeting point of the people of Alessandria
Via San Francesco d'Assisi - Associazione San Francesco and Gelindo with "La Divota Cumedia" a dialect show (during the Christmas period, from Christmas until mid January, possibility to see the afternoon/evening show)

In the afternoon, visit the Borsalino Museum to discover the most famous hat in the world, loved by the maestro.

Including tasting lunch with farinata ("bellecalda" in the local dialect - on open days tasting in one of Eco's favorite haunts on Via
Bergamo)

Meet guide in Piazza Matteotti in front of the Liceo Classico Umberto Eco

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Via Genova 128 Spinetta Marengo 15122 Alessandria