The Lake Como Light Festival is linked to the scientific tradition of Como, the birthplace of Alessandro Volta who, with the invention of the battery, opened the way not only to the countless applications of electricity, but to the whole modern world as a complex of technologies and knowledge ranging from energy, communication and automation, to computer science and its endless applications.
The Festival is organized by the Fondazione Alessandro Volta and promoted and supported by the Associazione Città della Luce.
In the International Year of Light 2015 – proclaimed by the United Nations – the Lake Como Light Festival 2015, now in its third edition, has received the patronage of UNESCO, the European Physical Society and the Italian Physical Society.
Thanks to the great success of the International Year of Light, UNESCO has declared May 16 International Day of Light (IDL), which is also celebrated every year in Como with an event organized by Lake Como – Festival of Light.
2019 Edition
Now in its sixth edition, the Lake Como Light Festival (3-23 May 2019) promises to be full of events in the heart of the city (but not only). This year’s theme is Chiarodiluna.
Splendid are the places where the various events will take place, including the Teatro Sociale and the Sala Bianca del Sociale, the magical Nymphaeum of the Museo Civico Paolo Giovio in Como for the electronic accordion concert by Sara Calvanelli and also some external venues, such as the Teatro Nuovo in Rebbio and Villa Imbonati in Cavallasca, thanks to the collaboration with the Municipality of San Fermo.
To inaugurate the Festival, on May 3rd, three events will take place: the opening of the exhibition La Luna at the University of Insubria; the opening of the exhibition Luna di Seta at the Silk Museum of Como, with lunar photos by Edoardo Romagnoli and their prints on silk. Finally, the first of the meetings and conferences Luna e Psiche. Dal mito della licantropia alla ricerca sugli effetti dei cicli lunari su corpo e mente in the Civic Library “P.Borsellino”, with the psychiatrist Roberto Cavallaro (University Life and Health of San Raffaele in Milan) and the neuroscientist Gianvito Martino (scientific director Hospital Life and Health of San Raffaele in Milan).
The usual appointment with the great international science will be very special this year: on May 5 the Festival of Light will host the British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of the first pulsar star, in 1967, still a young doctoral student.
The heart of the events of the Festival will beat again this year with the International Day of Light, organized through the collaboration with UNESCO and the Italian Society of Physics: an evening of science and entertainment at the Teatro Sociale, which will also see the announced participation of the second office of the State, President of the Senate Hon. Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, honored by the notes of a well-known pianist. The evening will also host a conference show of physicist Alessandro Bettini that will transport the public in the Renaissance of Galileo Galilei, with the diary of his astronomical discoveries and music of the time.
The Festival will end with a charity dinner dedicated to the Fondazione Cometa which, with its activities of training and accompaniment of children and young people, has been carrying out for years in Como a valuable activity to combat youth discomfort.