Festivaletteratura is a literary fair, held in Mantua

Mantua

Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, since 1997. Its peculiar formula is to host five days of small-sized lectures by authors from all over the world. The event is run mostly by volunteers, numbering around 700 in total. The lectures are hosted in historical places and squares, and during the five days of the fair there are about two hundred events. The low-profile style has in time attracted many big names of literature, along with Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

winners. The attendance to the events roughly matches the population of the city, so it is necessary to book tickets well in advance. In 2007 the fair celebrated its tenth edition.