Why the Foundations' decisive role is a tool for growth

Related to this is the second consideration.

In various non-metropolitan situations, so to speak, the role of ex-banking foundations is objectively essential. The writer can refer to Pavia and certain events of extraordinary socio-cultural importance, it should be noted, not only for the city.

In a few days, as part of the events marking the 500th anniversary of the momentous Battle of Pavia between the Spanish and the French, an exhibition-event will open in the rooms of the Castello Visconteo, right in the heart of the city centre, bringing together splendid, and also little-known to the general public, art objects from that period, from important museums and collections, which will accompany, although this term is not appropriate for their beauty, to the great Flemish tapestries of the 16th century that have their usual space in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, but which, after a demanding restoration and a successful grand tour in the United States, are returning to Italy and, for the first time, are being exhibited all together, outside Naples, in rooms set up ad hoc in the elegant Pavia manor house.

In addition to Milan and Pavia, from important foreign institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, from Windsor and Geneva, to peripheral but significant Italian churches such as Gambolò and Moncalvo...

The exhibition will provide a truly extraordinary opportunity for beauty, memory and cultural values in the broadest sense, for a hopefully widespread appreciation, particularly among the younger generations, of the variety of artistic expressions and their historical significance.

Now, all this could not have been achieved without the Fondazione Monte di Lombardia, which is based in Pavia, although it operates with equal intensity in Milan and also in the rest of the region. In fact, the Foundation has not limited itself to economic support, although not negligible, indeed the most conspicuous, but has believed in the exhibition, making its relational skills and professional resources available. Now, it is not only Pavia that will benefit in terms of image, culture and significance, but, if I may say so, the whole of Italy. And this is what also happened, in recent days, with the participation of I Solisti di Pavia in the Dante readings at the Italian pavilion at the Expo in Osaka. The Ensemble, an instrumental body of the Fondazione Monte di Lombardia, was greatly admired in that distant country, as a worthy expression of our culture and ability to transmit it.

The Foundations of banking origin, therefore, far from being outdated and crude clichés, are increasingly constituting, well understood in their autonomy as private entities, a tangible and intangible heritage of Italian society and an operational model for the entire, and increasingly important, Third Sector, also in its economic implications.

President Monte di Lombardia Foundation