Top Italian and international experts will help the public satisfy its thirst for learning at this northern city's festival of knowledge next month.
The debut edition of the 'Festival dei Saperi' takes place September 6-10.
It has a packed programme of exhibitions, debates, shows, concerts, literary readings, conferences and lectures on subjects ranging from art to anthropology and astrophysics.
American scientists Evelyn Fox Keller and Diane Paul and Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack are among those coming to illuminate visitors' minds.
The theme of the festival, which is organized by Pavia University and the city council, is "Man and his double - the identity of contemporary man in science and humanism". It is split into sections devoted to science and to the humanities.
The science section is centred at venues around the city's historic Piazza della Vittoria square and focuses on DNA-related discoveries.
One of the highlights will be Fox Keller's reflections on the "Innate Confusions" of the eternal debate about nature versus nurture.
Fox Keller is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a feminist and much of her recent research has concentrated on gender and science. University of Massachusetts Professor Paul will give a lecture on "Controlling human heredity eugenics", while NASA scientist Hack tackles the meaty subject of the origins and development of the universe.
The humanities section takes place at Castello Visconteo and Piazza Leonardo da Vinci at the heart of the city's highly esteemed university.
It features public debates on the art, philosophy and ideologies of the 20th century in the evenings. The festival will also see the inauguration of two exhibitions. The first of these is devoted to 250 works created by members of the early-20th-century Dada 'anti-art' movement. The show at Castello Visconteo reveals the inventive ways Dada followers ignored aesthetics and rebelled against everything they believed art was concerned with.
The second exhibition is entitled "Camillo Golgi - the Architect of the brain".
It celebrates the career of Golgi (1843-1926), an Italian physicist whose studies on the brain and the nervous system won him the 1906 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The show is hosted at Pavia University, where Golgi studied and worked.
Readings of works by British author Hanif Kureishi and Colombian Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez are also on the humanities programme, along with concerts of Renaissance music and pieces by Mozart. On September 9 the city's shops, bars and museums will
stay open till dawn for a 'White Night' and pop videos of the last 30 years will be screened in the town centre.
Visitors will also be able to taste the local gastronomy at food stalls and enjoy shows put on by street artists.
