In 1998, former Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci, Jr. signed a friendship pact with Leonardo Domenici, then-mayor of Florence, Italy. To celebrate this pact, Cianci commissioned Joyce Rudge to put on the first Splendor of Florence Festival, 25 years ago.
“The whole city became Florence for nine days,” Rudge told The Herald. After the original event in Providence, Rudge was commissioned to bring the festival to Philadelphia and New York City.
“People just congregated,” Rudge said. “It was a success.”
This year, Rudge is back in Providence to organize the festival in the Ocean State’s capital. Rudge’s creative team is collaborating with the Downtown Providence Park Network to celebrate the silver anniversary of the two cities’ friendship. The festival began on Nov. 9 and will continue through Nov. 17.
Titled “Sott'Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities Underwater,” this year’s festival focuses on climate resilience by highlighting the parallel flooding disasters that Providence and Florence faced decades ago.
In August 1954, Hurricane Carol’s 90 mile-per-hour winds left Providence with over $200 million in property damage. When the storm settled, downtown Providence lay under 12 feet of water.
Florence faced a similar disaster just over 10 years later. In November 1966, 19 inches of rain flooded the city for over 24 hours, pumping its buildings full of mud.
“Dozens of lives were lost, great works of art destroyed and a million antiquarian books were submerged,” according to the festival’s website.
Inspired by the destruction and subsequent rehabilitation of these artifacts and buildings, a large portion of the festival’s events are centered around the restoration of art, culture and history. “I want to show devastation, but I also want to show restoration,” Rudge said. “Restoration is a part of resiliency.”
And when it comes to this resiliency, “the Florentines are great at it — they’re into restoration more than creating,” she said.
The festival’s keynote photo exhibit, located at The Pavilion at Grace Church, includes restored pieces and features photos of both cities’ floods, allowing visitors to see “dramatic photos of each city underwater,” according to the website.
Alongside the art exhibit, Maria Giannini, a sixth-generation Florentine artisan, is leading a workshop in the techniques of marbling paper and book fabrication. Giannini teaches her family traditions to “bring (her) passion everywhere,” she said. “What I know is the legacy of my personal family. It's sharing this that … makes me very, very happy.” The workshop is offered on eight of the nine days of the festival.
Giannini participated in previous Splendor of Florence festivals, so returning to Providence this year is “wonderful,” she said. “It’s like a kind of second family.”
Giannini said she tries to maintain the balance between being “inspired by the past” and keeping up with the advancements of modern technology. If her ancestors didn’t adapt to changing times, Giannini said, she “couldn’t be here as a sixth-generation.”
For the festival, Providence restaurant Osteria Toscana has been transformed into a celebration of the two cities’ friendship. Local chef Armando Bisceglia created a Tuscan-inspired menu especially for the nine-day pop-up in collaboration with Florentine chefs Federico Minucci and Stefano Di Puccio.
But the “story” of cultural exchange “was already born many years ago,” Minucci said, pointing to Italian immigration to the United States beginning over a century ago.
Bringing Italian food to Providence is Minucci’s way of sharing a piece of himself with the community, he said.
“Each population has its own talents,” he said. “And our talent is food.”
Other events include a Save The Bay touch tank, a Tuscan takeover of the Hope & Main Downtown Makers Marketplace and an open conversation with Michele Jalbert, the executive director of Providence Resilience Partnership.
At Brown, the Department of Italian Studies and the Office of Global Engagement hosted a screening of Franco Zeffirelli's ‘Per Firenze’ on Nov. 13. The screening will be followed by a roundtable panel discussion with local flood mitigation experts on Nov. 14, Rudge said.
The panel, like many of the festival’s events, hopes to bring awareness to climate devastation while celebrating cross-cultural friendship, she added.
“We’ve got to pay attention, but we also have to continue enjoying life through art and culture,” Rudge explained. “And I think that’s what the Italians do so well.”
Maya Kelly is a Metro senior staff writer who covers health and environment. When she's not at The Herald, you can find her hanging from an aerial silk, bullet journaling, or stress-baking.
