En route Project – Vatican Apostolic Library

The eclectic contemporary traveler

o avoid any archaeological temptation, or even a vaguely backward-looking approach—something to which an ancient institution like ours is always susceptible, often unconsciously—we needed a sure antidote. Someone capable of blowing away the dust that threatened everything we would exhibit, as well as the very theme of the exhibition. That light and somewhat reassuring veil that would have enveloped everything in an impression of something already given and concluded. Of an event that had run its course and could now be aseptically displayed, evoking, at best, a vague nostalgia for the good old days. Appropriate adjectives would have been used—“pioneering,” “adventurous,” “challenging,” or “modern”—but they would have remained distant from the visitor’s lived experience.
Instead, what we needed was precisely the opposite: an artist whose work could bring back the burning experience of travel. Someone who could infuse those adjectives with vital elements. A living witness, capable of recounting contemporary experiences and thus making them fully relatable.

We were looking for someone who, beyond the thrill of adventure, had aspects and travel interests distinct from those whose stories we would be telling. Not a political traveler like Cesare Poma or Gertrude Bell, nor a journalist like Lucien Leroy or Henry Papillaud, nor even like Nellie Bly or Elizabeth Bisland. Not a philologist or archaeologist like the Smith sisters, nor an adventurer and proto-influencer like Annie Londonderry. Someone who traveled for other reasons and with a different sensitivity—perhaps musical, but not just as a temporary or opportunistic endeavor. Leroy and Papillaud, for instance, held numerous cabaret evenings and mini-concerts during their world tour, but that was not their profession; they were simply making use of their collateral skills.
Finally, someone the public could meet at the very entrance of the exhibition, right behind the gateway, who could take them from the absolute present—this very 2025—back 150 years to the burning experiences of the late 19th century, without sacrificing a single spark of vibrancy and novelty.

Who better than Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini? Singer-songwriter and traveler, passionate about rhythms and melodies from around the world, born just steps away from the Vatican, right by the city walls, and yet perpetually elsewhere—an explorer of musical worlds for over thirty years. He won us over instantly, outshining any other candidate, when he wrote to us: “Travel—there is no word in the vocabulary that ignites all my senses more than this one. For me, the very word ‘travel’ is a journey in itself; it affects me the way the sound of a can opening excites my cat.”

He was the one, we told ourselves, certain that we had found someone with whom we could truly engage in dialogue. Someone who fully understands what the Vatican Apostolic Library is and what it represents, yet is not intimidated by it, nor inclined to a stiff reverence.

Interview with Lorenzo Cherubini

by Francesca Giannetto

“I am the ‘magpie thief,’ as my wife calls me. I am drawn to things that shine and become irresistible, but without any real reason. I get excited if there’s a map, a sailing ship, something related to roads, to travel”.

That’s exactly how it is. I have some “issues” with the idea of home, and not just with the idea. Home, for me, is not the place to return to, but the place from which to depart. The origin of this feeling that dominates me is my childhood. The atmosphere in my house when I was a child was not exactly the kind you see in TV commercials, and I went outside to find my world. Fortunately, both 1970s Rome and my grandparents’ Cortona were places where I didn’t sense danger, even though I sometimes went looking for it. The world outside the house appealed to me, and, deep down, reassured me. Even today, houses always seem a bit like tombs, prisons, places I only love if I can leave.

In May, you get a call from the Vatican Library: “We are organizing an exhibition on two travelers from the late 1800s; we’d like to involve you, since like them, you travel by bike to discover the world.” What were your first impressions?

Joy and amazement. For me, the Vatican is a place close to my heart; my father worked there all his life, and I spent a lot of time there in my childhood. It’s a place that feels deeply familiar to me. The call from the Library filled me with enthusiasm; doors opened, which I truly saw as a sign, a blessing, an opportunity to imagine my father smiling at the idea that his son would have a place in that place he loved so much, and where he was able to raise a large family.

You’ve written that yours is not a family of travelers, but that by digging, digging, and digging, you found an Etruscan with dry legs who entrusted his notes to the god of wandering, thus inventing travel for travel’s sake, moving just to move. What is travel to you? How has your approach to traveling changed over the different stages of your life? And how have travelers changed over time?

Travel is life itself, although kilometers are an ingredient that, for me, is necessary but not indispensable. I’ve traveled and continue to travel even while stationary, through music, literature, films, maps, ideas, and imagination. In today’s world, the destinations of the tourism industry are all the same, with the same shops, the same food. In the end, the great urban centers are all the same city, one massive metropolis, a single tourist village, where everything is planned, and every aspect is part of the product. Tourism is a huge industry, which doesn’t interest me. My passion for travel started very early; my very first memory is the live broadcast of the moon landing. That memory implanted itself in me like a seed of a forest that has never stopped growing and expanding in every possible direction.

What was your first trip that wasn’t “for work”? What do you remember about what drove you to leave? When did you realize that traveling would be an integral part of your life, both personally and artistically?

Luckily, I’ve never perceived the difference between what is “work” and what is not. My commitment lasts 24 hours a day, even when I sleep. It’s always been like that; since I can remember, I’ve felt immersed in a kind of picaresque adventure, without any real purpose other than encountering things and people along the way. In fact, I don’t know what free time is, because work has always been my idea of time and even of freedom. It’s not all roses and flowers; sometimes, this obsession with seeking images and ideas for elaborating a concept prevents me from living things fully, making me a spectator.
Life is both tragedy and comedy intertwined in a double spiral, like the structure of DNA, and I like to imagine this spiral twisting toward a height, or a depth that will remain a mystery, like the horizon, which shifts a step with every step we take.

Continue reading the interview in the exhibition catalogue, available for purchase at our Bookshop or on the Antiga Edizioni website.