The Amerigo Vespucci brings the Made in Italy flag to Tokyo

After the Los Angeles and Honolulu stops, the Amerigo Vespucci - the Italian Navy's training ship - will touch the coast of Japan, where it will arrive tomorrow to stop, for the first time in its 93 years of history, in the port of Tokyo until 30 August. Here the Villaggio Italia (Italy Village) will also be set up, the travelling exhibition which, on board the historic sailing ship, is taking Italian culture and art, history and innovation, science and sport, research and technology to eight world capitals.

Twenty-second stop on the world tour of the sailing ship that will set sail on 1 July 2023 from the port of Genoa, Tokyo is the second city where the Italian Village will also be present and will be a sort of dress rehearsal of the 'Italian System' in view of next year's Expo in Osaka. Among the symbols of Made in Italy on show in Tokyo are the Italian Opera Academy of Maestro Riccardo Muti, the musicians of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala, the 'David' of the artist Jago, Italian cinema in collaboration with the International Film Festival of the Venice Biennale, the Navy Band, and many important Italian wines, in collaboration with Verona Fiere-Vinitaly. Concerts, exhibitions, immersive installations, events and conferences will enliven the Village programme until next Friday.

The inauguration (scheduled for Monday at 10 a.m.) will be attended, among others, by Defence Minister Guido Crosetto and his Japanese counterpart Minoru Kihara, the Italian Ambassador to Japan Gianluigi Benedetti, Luca Andreoli, CEO of Difesa Servizi, the in-house company of the Ministry of Defence that manages the initiative, the president of the Ice agency, Matteo Zoppas, and many other institutional figures, testifying to the strategic relevance, for the country system, of this initiative, supported by no less than 11 ministries, as Luca Andreoli recalls. Further strengthening cooperation relations between Italy and Japan will be the presence of the ships that make up the Italian Aircraft Carrier Group. In particular, the aircraft carrier Cavour and the Frigate Alpino will be stationed in Yokosuka, while the Multi-purpose Offshore Patrol vessel Raimondo Montecuccoli will be stationed in Okinawa, as part of the operational projection campaign in the Indo-Pacific with Naval diplomacy tasks and the promotion of the Country System and Italian excellence in the sector industry.

"The Village is a bubble of Italianness, a travelling mini-Expo, a project that has never been realised before, made possible by a precise institutional will, through the protocol signed by 11 ministries, and by the organisation under the Ministry of Defence through our company, which has availed itself of a public-private partnership as far as financing is concerned". The Los Angeles stage aroused great interest among the public, explains Andreoli, who hopes to replicate the success in Tokyo as well, given the high number of bookings already received for the visit of both the Vespucci, itself an ambassador of Made in Italy, and the Village, with a schedule now almost sold out. The next stops of the Villaggio Italia (within the Vespucci tour, which will touch 31 countries before returning to Genoa in June 2025) will be Darwin (Australia) from 4 to 7 October, Singapore from 24 to 28 October, Mumbai (India) from 28 November to 2 December, Doha (Qatar) from 18 to 21 December, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) from 23 to 26 December, and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) from 20 to 24 January next year.