Brunello Cucinelli on the desire to be far away from the crowd

But the forbidden fruit, the biggest of my dreams, is Istanbul, suspended between west and east, overlooking the wonder of the Golden Horn. My imagination flies back to Constantine the Great’s vision, who chose Byzantium as the second Rome, the core of the new empire. For me, Istanbul is its sunsets, its domes, its kind people who know how to live in harmony with nature. While waiting to embrace the city again in person, I visit it often rereading the moving pages that Edmondo De Amicis dedicated to it. One single form is not enough for beautiful things: for example, each destination is forever linked to a kind of music: it can be fado for Lisbon, the voice of Sinatra for San Francisco…. Without knowing all the forms of a place you can’t perceive its genius. But perhaps the noblest is the book, to which no other is comparable, because nothing else allows you to escape without leaving home. Who, after reading Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous, has not felt like one of the many sailors taken with love and fear for the ocean? Who, after reading Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, doesn’t know inch by inch the romantic woods surrounding Paris?’

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Brunello Cucinelli on Umbria, Italy

Brunello Cucinelli on Umbria, Italy