HISTORY LESSONS 2026 Cultural capitals Third meeting Constantinople, the new Rome with Alessandra Bucossi Saturday, January 24, 2026 at the Donizetti Theatre Constantinople, the New Rome is the title of the next event in the third edition of Lessons in History, an event organized by the Donizetti Theater Foundation in collaboration with Editori Laterza and with the support of BCC Oglio e Serio. Starting with Athens and continuing with Venice, the journey among the Cultural Capitals now makes a stop, Saturday, Jan. 24 at the Donizetti Theater (11 a.m.), in the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Alessandra Bucossi, professor of Byzantine Civilization at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, will trace its origins and development as the cradle of the Ottoman Empire. Founded as the "new Rome" by Emperor Constantine in 330 A.D. on the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, Constantinople inherited models and symbols from the Urbe, but reworked them profoundly in a confrontation that would unfold for centuries between imitation and conflict. In the Byzantine gaze, Rome is both mother and adversary: a tension between loyalty and rejection that marked the cultural and political history of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Alessandra Bucossi teaches Byzantine Civilization at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, where she has been working since 2014. A philologist by training, she works on Byzantine polemical literature (9th and 13th centuries), a still little-studied production that arose in the context of the rift between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople. She has published two landmark critical editions in the prestigious Corpus Christianorum series (Brepols), devoted to key texts of the 12th century: Andronicus Camatero's Sacred Arsenal, hitherto unpublished, and the Dialogues of Nicetas of Thessalonica, made available in complete form for the first time. She is the editor of three collections of essays on Byzantine history, philology and religious history, and the author of scholarly articles devoted to various aspects of Byzantine polemical literature. She devised the first systematic repertory of Greek, Latin and Slavic polemical literature. Lessons in History will continue on Feb. 7 with Maurizio Bettini and Rome, city of the gods, to conclude the journey among the Cultural Capitals on Feb. 14 with Paolo Nori who will shine the spotlight on St. Petersburg and the avant-garde. All meetings begin at 11 a.m. and are introduced by journalist Max Pavan, Bergamo TV news director. At the end of each meeting, the authors will stop with the audience for a firmacopie at the Theater's Ridotto Gavazzeni.