“CIAO PAOLO!” THE CITTASLOW CREATOR PAOLO SATURNINI IS DEAD

2 July 2020 - Paolo Saturnini, former Mayor of Greve in Chianti and first inspirer of the Cittaslow idea in 1998, passed away due to a sudden illness. The President Stefano Pisani with the 275 Mayors of the world Cittaslow mourning the serious loss, joins the pain of the family members and citizens of Greve, first of all, the Mayor Paolo Sottani.

Paolo Saturnini, Mayor of Greve in Chianti from 1990 to 2004, is remembered all over the world for being the first to have the idea of ​​inserting "slow" culture in the local government of towns, inspired by the great Carlo Petrini of Slow Food. He is remembered by all for the correctness and determination shown over the years of first-hand commitment to his town and his territory that he loved so much. However, his vocation for "practical" action did not prevent him from being the bearer of broader innovative and proactive visions and ideas. 

Just in the complex and apparently univocal years of the turn of the century, where it seemed that fast culture and economic and social homogenization were the only viable ways, Saturnini proposed to three other Italian colleagues mayors to create Cittaslow: this was how Paolo Saturnini founded the October 15, 1999 in Orvieto the association that creates a discontinuity in the concept itself of self-government of small towns and communities.

"His passion still today and until yesterday evening, saw him engaged in cultural and political battles in defense of his Greve - says the President of Cittaslow, Stefano Pisani, Mayor of Pollica (SA) -. I have always been appreciating his speeches by which he was able to inspire in Italy as in South Korea also the younger generations who through him understood and made Cittaslow's ideas and projects their own".

"On October 21st 2012 it was really a great honor for Paolo - explains the Secretary General of the association, Pier Giorgio Oliveti - to receive the certificate of “Honorary President of Cittaslow International” from the hands of President Gian Luca Marconi at the General Assembly of Cittaslow in Novellara. A dutiful tribute for the man who had started a movement of world value, which today more than ever manages to influence reality and proposes post Covid-19 projects as a "vaccine of modernity"".