La rue d’un village italien pavée de 3000 livres

The street of an Italian village paved with 3000 pounds

World premiere

Tagliata will now be a name that tickles the imagination of the Bibliovores. This August 6, 2025, from 7:00 p.m., the main via this tiny hamlet lost in the Brembana valley – Costa Serina, near Bergamo – has metamorphosed into a word carpet. A street entirely covered with books: how was such a poetic idea born?
Three thousand volumes were deposited, impossible to move forward (or even to set foot) other than admiring each cover. All until 9:30 p.m., in an artistic installation as fragile as it is extraordinary.
Everything starts from a summer library inaugurated in June 2024 by Giovanni Cortinovis, journalist attached to his original contrada. At the time, only 50 pounds, but in a few months the fund exceeded 1,500, carried by the fervor of readers, passers -by, social networks – the Facebook group “Il Favoloso Mondo di Tagliata” attests. The concept is simple and powerful: you take a book, you drop a stamp, you make it (or not) when you want.
But let’s go back to this evening in August: the street becomes symbolic, relates Val Brembana. We don’t walk anymore, we move forward intellectually. “The reader does not remain frozen on himself, but progresses, learns, discovers,” said the press release. The gesture has manifest value: reading as a journey, as a gentle resistance against the opacity of the world, as a breath for the mind.
Beyond the simple cultural gesture, Giovanni Cortinovis was able to anchor his project in a very concrete dimension of solidarity. The profits taken from his first book, devoted to the legendary Moto North West 200 race, thus made it possible to offer the village a defibrillator, installed near the church. A detail? Not really. In such an isolated hamlet, such equipment can save lives. The metaphor is all found: culture here is not just a breath for the mind, it is also, sometimes, a heartbeat for the community.
The initiative is not limited to lovers of Belles-Lettres. In place, an open -air toy library has taken up its summer quarters: tables, chairs, board games, colored pencils …
The children draw there while the parents leaf through a novel, and the generations intersect with the parts and stories told. The idea is simple: reading a shared, open moment, where the book is not a sacred object but a companion of play and conversation. And if this “Strada di Libri” seems unique, it nevertheless resonates with a larger movement. In the Julienne Frioul-Vénétie, the program “La Strada dei Libri passed da…” travels in summer with outdoor readings, workshops and shows, in no less than seventy-seven communes. There, a “stories passport” is even offered to children to follow their village discoveries in the village.
Tagliata is not on this official map, but its August installation is naturally part of this same momentum: that of bringing books out of the walls, making them live in the open air and restoring reading its role of social ties.
Ng