A packed Piazza Partigiani welcomed journalist, historian, essayist and television author Paolo Mieli on Saturday evening, as the star of the 20th edition of the "Alassio Award for Cultural Information", presented as part of the Ligyes 2026 Festival, promoted by the Municipality of Alassio under the patronage of the Liguria Region.
The award was presented by Alassio Mayor Marco Melgrati, who read out the motivation with which the technical jury, composed of president Giulio Anselmi, vice-president Franco Manzitti and juror Antonio Ricci, assigned the recognition: "The award that Alassio wished to bestow upon Paolo Mieli is thoroughly deserved, earned across multiple fields: journalism, which led him to the editorship of Corriere della Sera, and history, Mieli's true passion, expressed through articles, books and the hosting of television programmes. Always with intelligence and careful observation of reality."
Interviewed by Christian Floris, Mieli offered the audience important reflections, beginning with those concerning the wars that mark our time. Retracing the greatest conflicts in history, all sharing the common thread of being accompanied by devastating pandemics, he invited the public to look to the future with confidence. An optimism that, he explained, does not stem from a naively positive attitude, but from a knowledge of history, which teaches that "humanity has always known how to pick itself back up, achieve great progress and take decisive steps even, and above all, after the hardest trials." These themes are naturally also central to his most recent volume 'Il prezzo della pace' (The Price of Peace, published by Rizzoli), in which Mieli addresses the complex mechanisms of peacemaking after conflicts, tracing a path from ancient history through to contemporary events.
