SLOW FOOD AND THE AGENZIA

Just eight years after founding Slow Food, Carlo Petrini felt a strong need to develop a large, prestigious hub of food and wine culture, which he interprets innovatively as a science. He imagined the place as the cultural powerhouse of a new “eno-gastronomy” based on the quality of food and wine, respectful of biodiversity and the environment, careful to erase any form of workplace exploitation. Hence the seven-year rescue operation on the wonderful neo-Gothic complex of the Agenzia, a huge space where Albergo dell’Agenzia, University of Gastronomic Sciences, Academic Tables and Wine Bank live side by side in a state of synergy.

HISTORICAL NOTES

Back in 1986, supported by a group of friends, Carlo Petrini founded the Arcigola association, the first outpost of “resistance” to the ongoing standardization of food. The success of the initiative was immediate and just three years later, in Paris in 1989, the association became international under the name Slow Food. It now has more than 100,000 members and branches in 130 countries. Carlo Petrini’s ideas are now an international benchmark for food culture, and Petrini himself has been included by the British newspaper The Guardian in its list of “50 People Who Could Save The Planet.”

SLOW FOOD’S PROJECTS

Slow Food promotes and organizes a vast array of special initiatives through its local and international associations, known as Convivia. Held in Turin every two years, Terra Madre/Salone del Gusto is the world’s largest food event, while 10,000 Gardens in Africa, The Ark of Taste, Slow Fish, Cheese, Slow Meat and the Presidia are just some of the projects designed to change eating habits, to teach people to eat high quality food and ensure respect for the environment and biodiversity. As a result, thousands of citizens, farmers and producers are now working every day to put on our tables food that is “good, clean and fair.

SLOW FOOD

WINE BANK

An unforgettable experience among 100,000 bottles and more of the world’s greatest wines under the stone vaults of the Agenzia’s cellars.

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UNIVERSITY OF GASTRONOMIC SCIENCES

Young people from all over the world come to Pollenzo every year to discover flavors, gastronomic excellence and the best production techniques.

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SLOW FOOD

It was here, among the hills in the heart of rural Piedmont, that the story of Slow Food, the association that puts “good, clean and fair” food at the center of the cultural debate, began. And it was from an idea of Slow Food’s that the project to restore the entire Pollenzo complex was born.

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