I began my story by telling the story of the Po. And I did so by navigating it in a small wooden boat, in an honest way, using arms and wind, traveling upstream and downstream. Toward its source, and back again.
In this way I discovered the most beautiful road in Italy.
Then I traveled along the rivers of Europe.
In recent times there has been much talk about climate change, and rivers have played an extremely important role—for better and sometimes for worse, and not through any fault of their own.
Water is a carrier. The boat is a carrier. And human beings are carriers—of elements, nourishment, ideas, goods, of life itself.
This new project aims to bring water and rivers back to the center of our collective attention, and to remind us of what they have represented: their importance as liquid highways that allow ideas, animals, and everything they carry—so essential to our lives—to flow freely, rather than being confined within violent embankments that prevent life from doing what a river is meant to do: carry life.
When a river is regulated and constrained, sooner or later it brings not only life.
The journey will depart from Trieste and, through encounters and landscapes, will tell the story of this world that for centuries allowed us to live prosperously, bringing water, food, ideas, and routes of communication to all peoples.
It would be wonderful to return to telling these stories—to rediscover these pathways in harmony, respecting them and respecting everything that lives within them, above them, and around them.