La Repubblica celebrated its fortieth anniversary and we, who have been at the side of the newspaper founded by Eugenio Scalfari ever since the first edition of La Repubblica delle Idee (Bologna, 2012), were also in Rome at the Parco della Musica for an anniversary celebration on the 14th of January. The event included a Web Notte special feature, in a ‘deluxe’ version of the successful TV and web show, hosted as usual by Ernesto Assante and Gino Castaldo. With an outstanding lineup of guests: Francesco De Gregori, Fiorello, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Roberto Saviano, Antonello Venditti, Alex Britti, Stefano Di Battista and Renzo Arbore with Gegè Telesforo’s band, as well as Gigi Proietti, Paola Cortellesi, Riccardo Rossi and director Giuseppe Tornatore.

Before the party, the baton was passed to the new editor-in-chief Mario Calabresi, after two decades of service by Ezio Mauro and before him Eugenio Scalfari for the same number of years, with all of them gathered on stage to be interviewed by Assante and Castaldo, together with Carlo De Benedetti.

Beyond the audience, the guest list also included the speaker of the Lower House in the Italian Parliament, Laura Boldrini, who discussed the role of the newspaper as an “important tool to understand the country we live in.” The Italian President Sergio Mattarella sent a letter noting that La Repubblica has always been a “newspaper that stood up to power and created a new idea of Italy along the way.”