When a global event leaves an entire city hanging in limbo
Talking about culture in Belluno is not easy. It is a city I deeply love—not out of abstract principle, but because of concrete experience: sporting events organized over the years, initiatives that brought people into the streets, and even more distant experiences, such as those now-remote editions of “Natale a Mel”. With those events (and with the help of all the small local shops), I managed to transform a small town into a vibrant, living place, animated by painters working live, before the eyes of dozens of people drawn not by a poster, but by the real experience of art happening in front of them.
Precisely for this reason, I feel a responsibility to address—respectfully but realistically—the exhibition “Città sospese” (“Suspended Cities”) and the statements that accompany it.
On the official website, the project is described as “a regeneration initiative that uses contemporary art and corporate patronage to connect artists, businesses, and citizens, transforming inactive spaces into places of culture and social interaction.”
It is an ambitious definition, but one that deserves to be tested against reality.
The question—simple yet unavoidable—is this:
how do thirteen abandoned shop windows, wrapped and sealed shut, truly manage to connect artists with the community?
Walking through the city center, what one observes are not clusters of people stopping, discussing, and engaging with the works. Instead, one sees the usual flow of passersby moving through the streets as always, while the closed shop windows remain closed—only covered. Not places of social interaction, but mute surfaces. Not reactivated spaces, but containers that remain inaccessible.
This is not to deny the commitment of those who worked on the project, nor the value of the artists involved, nor the goodwill of the sponsors. But commitment alone cannot be the sole criterion of evaluation — especially when we speak of urban regeneration and community benefit.
Regeneration means activating, not merely wrapping.
It means creating opportunities for encounter, pause, and dialogue.
It means bringing people, not just images.
In recent years, Belluno has shown that when the goal is to attract visitors, there are formulas that work. The Andy Warhol exhibition—whether one appreciated it artistically or not—brought thousands of people to the city. People who walked through the historic center, ate in restaurants, visited bars and shops. Tangible numbers, certainly not extraordinary, but measurable and with a real impact.
Likewise, smaller but authentic experiences—such as artists painting live in the narrow streets of Mel, or the sculpture Ex Tempore in San Martino—demonstrate that people stop when art becomes experience, relationship, and physical presence, rather than passive display.
The issue, therefore, is not a clash between “high” culture and “popular” culture, nor a questioning of the legitimacy of experimental projects. The issue lies elsewhere, and it is deeply political in the noblest sense of the word:
if an initiative is presented as a tool for urban regeneration and civic connection, then it must produce visible effects on the life of the city.
This reasoning applies even more strongly when public funds and state sponsorships are involved.
In recent years in Italy, we have witnessed millions of euros distributed “like rain” in the name of culture, often without any real measurement of impact. The case of Agrigento, Italian Capital of Culture 2025, is emblematic: grand announcements, high expectations, but results that—according to many analyses—failed to generate the promised structural regeneration. Undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the inertia (or ineptitude?) of local administrations.
It is therefore legitimate to ask why cities like Belluno—too often forgotten by decision-makers in Rome and Venice—cannot become recipients of serious investments, designed for fragile yet strategic territories, capable of genuinely transforming urban quality of life and tourism appeal.
An Italy that works makes different choices.
An Italy that works:
uses major events as leverage, not as an end in themselves;
measures results while acting, not only afterward;
builds projects and initiatives designed for citizens, not for the opening ceremony;
respects the territory, instead of bending it to media urgency.
Agrigento shows us what happens when this does not occur.
And today, Milan–Cortina could have represented one last, enormous opportunity to demonstrate that we have learned something—or at least that we could have. In light of the absence of Olympic events in the city, it is difficult not to think that this train, too, has passed without stopping. Zero events mean zero related opportunities, zero induced flows, zero cultural legacy. An opportunity that risks remaining purely geographic, not strategic.
Belluno needs people who arrive, who stay, who live the historic center. Shopkeepers need them, bars and restaurateurs need them—but above all, the city itself needs them as a living organism. To bring people to Belluno requires something entirely different: it requires designing events starting from the audience, from experience, from real impact—not merely from the conceptual coherence of a project.
At this point, it is worth recalling one example above all others: the former Jesuit church of Belluno—returned to the city with a ceremony on April 30, 2022, after a restoration involving an investment of approximately €2.2 million for urban regeneration—which has since remained largely inactive, without continuous use sufficient to justify the burden borne by the community.
These reflections do not arise from disaffection or sterile criticism. They arise from the exact opposite: from someone who lives Belluno, knows it, and has already seen it work—when the city itself, rather than the project alone, was placed at the center of decision-making.
If we truly want to regenerate, we must have the courage to ask ourselves not only what we are doing, but above all for whom and with what results. Because opportunities, large or small, do not come around endlessly.
And Belluno can no longer afford to remain suspended in limbo.
Michele Sacchet
