Innovations that have made history are on show. Focus also on construction sites

The Italy of patents lands in Osaka. Innovations that marked an era, entering our lives and changing society. The exhibition on 'Italy of Patents: Successful Inventions and Innovations', organised by the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy, closed in Rome at Palazzo Piacentini on 31 March. The exhibition recounts the past and present through the impact of more than 100 industrial invention patents on Italian society, comparing different generations of creators: those who in the early days filed their inventions individually and those who today, increasingly, work in multidisciplinary teams within universities, research centres and start-ups. From now until 13 October 2025, a selection of these innovations will be on display in the Italian Pavilion at the Japanese Expo. Anna Maria Bernini, Minister of University and Research, is scheduled to visit the Expo on 28 and 29 May. She will be interviewed on innovation and research issues, live on Radiocor's Facebook page of Il Sole 24 Ore and LinkedIn. Innovation in Osaka will also be tangible. That of Ganiga, for example, the Italian start-up of the smart bin, which uses generative artificial intelligence to do its own waste sorting. The name Ganiga combines the first syllables of the names of the three founders: Gabriele Cavallaro, Nicolas Zeoli and Gabriel Trivelli, who later left the Pisa-based company.

The MIT (Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport) will also be among the protagonists of the Italian Pavilion, where it will have a permanent exhibition space. Minister Matteo Salvini is planning a visit to the Expo in Osaka (date yet to be defined). The MIT will offer visitors an immersive experience, conceived as follows: a virtual train journey, on three screens, to show the world the major works that will change Italy in the coming years, from the Alps to Sicily. It starts in the West, with the Turin-Lyon Tav, and then moves East, between Italy and Austria, where the new Brenner railway tunnel, one of the longest in the world (scheduled for completion in 2032), is being built. Then we leave the rock and introduce the element of water: the Mose in Venice and the Genoa breakwater, the deepest in Europe, appear in the journey of this virtual train.

Then the imaginary train, passing through Valcamonica where it meets the hydrogen train and crossing the Passante Av in Florence, arrives in Rome: the spotlight is on the Metro C and in particular on the Piazza Venezia station (Fori Imperiali), while, with the images of the works, numbers and other information also scroll across the screens. And the train now points decisively towards southern Italy: first with the Naples-Bari high-speed train, a work destined to radically change the connections between the two cities, and then with the digital rendering of the bridge over the Strait of Messina. Finally, MIT's virtual train once again takes the road to the North for its last stop: the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games and the system of works connected to them.