An invitation from Prof. Pierluigi Luisi:
Dear Cortona friends
Unfortunately, no good news from me. I am actually very sad to have to announce to you the total cancellation of the Cortona week 2025.
I imagine that this is a shock for most of you, as it was for me and Carlo Ventura, the new director of the Cortona week. A series of unexpected conditions have obliged us to take this step.
First of all, the problem of finances : the Cortona week, as run until now, reimburses room and board as well as travel expenses to all speakers and workshop leaders, and this, also because of the economic situation in Europe and Italy in particular, became unsustainable. Until now we have covered these expenses with the fees of the registration (1000 euro for students, 1500 euro for non-students) -fees which could not be further increased. Even so, we had a relatively low number of registrations. In turn, this low number is due to a general problem in Academia: the lack of interest of most students (and most of their professors?) in this era of dominant consumerism, for the values of trans-disciplinarity and ethics.
Of course, this is one more reason why communities like the Cortona friends are necessary and actually very important for our brave new world, and we will continue our fight. However, we believe that a pause for reflection on the organization of the Cortona week is necessary for its survival.
There are also some more technical problems with the hosting hotel, which I do not wish to elaborate, and the state of health of Pier Luigi in these previous months, but we do not need to go into such details, it would not change the situation.
My deepest apologies go to all our formidable speakers and workshop leaders who with great enthusiasm had answered positively to our invitation – it was indeed a formidable program. And also deepest thanks to Federico Faggin, who was ready, also this time, to financially support one dozen American students to come to Italy. But all this richness will be present in the next Cortona event, whose form is now in debate. You may all of course contribute, only consider that in its 40 years of life, the Cortona-week has seen the advice of so many excellent minds. The main problem is the lack of one or more sponsors.
You will be informed of all news, including of course the new edition of our work (2026?)
Luigi and Carlo
A program to foster a new class of world leaders
Cortona Week is an interdisciplinary residency where graduate students and young managers from all over the world and from all disciplines come in contact (in addition to several critical scientists) with artists, musicians, spiritual leaders, poets, professionals in medicine and psychology, and politicians.
We work together in round table discussions, lectures and experiential workshops, where the participants can engage, for instance, in painting, sculpture or music, meditation, theatre choosing by themselves which aspects of life are more important for their own equilibrium.
The aim, with the help of world-renowned professionals and visionaries, is to open up the horizon of the participants to the values of ecology, ethics, tolerance, internal introspection as well as the actual new frontiers of science, literature, art, economics — the full display of human experience — where life becomes a system view of interacting parts, and not an addition of single isolated domains.
We devote ourselves to this task with the cognition that such a holistic, systemic thinking is generally not provided by our common academic institutions — which form specialists in only one discipline – and noticing, as a consequence, that the problems of our world cannot be solved or even tackled by only one discipline at a time.
The ultimate, ideal aim of Cortona Week is to forge and catalyze a new class of world leaders — thing of the utmost necessity for our world today; and to reinforce ethics and human dignity in an environment which presently is dangerously close to becoming foreign or even hostile to us.
The Cortona Week is a residential retreat for about 100 participants. Partial participation is not allowed, for the same applies to faculty and staff members. Lectures are in English only, no simultaneous translation is provided.
The Cortona week 2025 has been canceled. We are working on 2026 edition.
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION: Pier Luigi Luisi, Prof. Emeritus ETH Zurich
ADVISORY BOARD: Fritjof Capra, Physicist and Author, Berkeley, USA; Michel Bitbol, Philosopher, Paris, France; brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine Monk, Ithaca, USA; Renuka Singh, Professor of Sociology, New Delhi, India; David Lorimer, Pres. Medical network, Aberdeen, UK; Wittfrida Mitterer, bio-architecture, Professor at LUMSA and Innsbruck university; Jorg Rasche, psychotherapist, Berlin, Germany; Kamran Mofid, Founder of the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative.