Alessandro Barbero (Turin, 1959), a former university professor and renowned medievalist, completed his advanced studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa following his degree in Literature, subsequently holding various research positions. Until his retirement in 2024, he served as Full Professor of Medieval History at the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale "Amedeo Avogadro", an institution that appointed him Honorary Professor in 2026. He contributes to several newspapers and periodicals and, as a consultant and presenter, previously curated a historical custom and culture segment for the popular RAI television show Superquark. He has also been a member of the scientific committee for the program Il tempo e la storia on Rai 3 and currently serves on Passato e presente, broadcast on the same network and on Rai Storia. Among his historical essays, several have become major, widely reprinted bestsellers, as exemplified by landmark monographs such as Carlo Magno (2000), Caporetto (2017) – released for the centenary of the infamous battle –, Dante (2020), and his thoroughly documented biographical volume San Francesco (2025). Conversely, his first major fiction success dates back to Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle gentiluomo (1995), a novel recounting the misadventures of an imaginary spy in 18th-century European courts, which earned him the Strega Prize. His equally popular fictional works include Romanzo russo (1998), L'ultimo rosa di Lautrec (2001), Poeta al comando (2003), Gli occhi di Venezia (2011), Le ateniesi (2015), Alabama (2021), and Brick for stone (2023). For many years, Barbero has guided readers and listeners across the grand stage of history, successfully bringing a distant past closer to an immensely diverse audience. This impact is reinforced by his massive success on the internet, where audio-visual recordings of his lectures and his podcast episodes consistently achieve vast viewership and download numbers, to the extent that he has even inspired songs dedicated to him.

(photo: © Giliola Chistè)