The Travel Literature Festival, promoted by the Italian Geographical Society and organized by the Travel Culture Association, returns from September 26 to October 5, 2025, under the artistic direction of journalist and photographer Antonio Politano.
Now in its 16th edition, the Festival features approximately 80 events and over 100 authors, featuring a program of meetings, awards, exhibitions, workshops, walks, children's activities, and initiatives for people with disabilities. This year, the festival encompasses a main theme (Islands, Sea, Oceans) and a complementary theme (spiritual journeys, in celebration of the Jubilee). Most of the events—dedicated to narrating the world, near and far, its places and cultures, through literature, journalism, photography, theater, music, and comics—are concentrated in Palazzetto Mattei, home of the Italian Geographical Society, and in the Gardens of Villa Celimontana, and are complemented by traveling activities throughout the city.
Among the protagonists are authors such as Björn Larsson, Sylvain Tesson, and Paolo Giordano, musician Paolo Fresu, and journalist Riccardo Iacona, representatives of organizations involved in sea rescue, and figures such as Hugo Pratt, to whom the exhibition The Great Adventure. From Ulysses to Corto Maltese, Traveling with Hugo Pratt, thirty years after his death is dedicated (presented in a distributed format at the Museum of Civilizations, the National Central Library, the Palazzo della Farnesina, and Palazzetto Mattei, headquarters of the Italian Geographical Society, in Villa Celimontana). Territories such as French Polynesia (Tahiti and its islands), which will be the Festival's "guest country," with screenings and dance performances.
And then the usual meetings with narrators of various backgrounds. A literary tournament, with the participation of Rome's libraries and reading clubs. Tributes to Sebastião Salgado and Pepe Mujica. Several lectures on the sky and constellations as inversions of seas and archipelagos; on poetry; on social media and literary classics; on the Earth's Constitution as a tool for addressing global emergencies and ensuring a sustainable future for humanity; and on the geopolitics of the sea. Two theatrical events inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest and Stefano D'Arrigo's Horcynus Orca (50 years after its publication). The presentation of travel notebooks (in Patagonia) and unpublished comics. An in-depth look at Roots Tourism, with musical performances and image projections (in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation). A focus on the small islands of Italy and the Mediterranean, a forum on walking and other speeds, a seminar on the census of Italy's intangible heritage (organized by the National Union of Pro Loco of Italy and the Central Institute of Intangible Heritage), a roundtable dedicated to travel literature as an invitation to reading, promoted in collaboration with the Centre for Books and Reading.
On the occasion of the 2025 Jubilee, Zetema Progetto Cultura presents the "Walkings to Rome" program as part of the meeting "Franciscanism and the History of Pilgrimage." The other exhibition, held in the spaces opposite the headquarters of the Italian Geographical Society, also at Villa Celimontana, is "Along the Current," featuring satellite and reportage images from the Azores to the Svalbard Islands, in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the RISE association as part of the Copernicus Program.
The project, promoted by the Rome Capitale Department of Culture, won the public call "Creative Rome 365. Culture all year round," in collaboration with Zètema Progetto Cultura.
Photo: official poster of the festival
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