Cortina Award 2025, Valerio Aiolli and Daniele Zovi win

The announcement at the opening of the most anticipated cultural summer in the Dolomites, which will start on July 11th with the "Una Montagna di Libri" festival

In the face of mystery, writing investigates; in the face of beauty, writing contemplates. These are the two souls that have conquered the juries of the Cortina d'Ampezzo Prize 2025, announced at the opening of the most anticipated cultural summer in the Dolomites, which will start on July 11 with the review "Una Montagna di Libri". This year's winners are Valerio Aiolli, with "Portofino blues" (Voland) and Daniele Zovi, with "Sulle Alpi" (Raffaello Cortina).

In the novel "Portofino blues", winner of the fifteenth edition of the Cortina d'Ampezzo Prize, Valerio Aiolli delves into one of the great unsolved enigmas of Italian news: the mysterious death of Countess Francesca Vacca Agusta, who fell from the cliff of Villa Altachiara in January 2001. An episode that had turned the spotlight on Portofino and the secrets of the jet set for weeks. "The writing is brilliant, the plot is conducted with mastery and precision", says the jury chaired by Gian Arturo Ferrari. "Aiolli guides us through passions, power, tax evasion and opaque relationships, building a true novel-reportage on the metamorphosis of the country".

From the cliff of Portofino we climb to the Alpine peaks with "Sulle Alpi", the latest work by Daniele Zovi, a deep and sensitive voice of Italian nature, who won the Premio della Montagna Cortina d'Ampezzo. A book that is much more than a geographical guide: it is a physical and spiritual crossing of the mountains we inhabit, often without really knowing them. "Zovi arrives at the culmination of an intense journey through woods, silences and storms", writes the jury of the Premio della Montagna, led by Marina Valensise. "It restores the surprise of the unknown nearby and reminds us how the Alps are still a territory to be listened to". From the diaries of Camillo Sbarbaro to the myth of Hannibal, from the lights of Mont Blanc seen by Goethe to the wooden sculptures born after the Vaia storm, Zovi intertwines time, memory and landscape. A literature of walking and wonder, capable of making us feel small in front of the natural vastness.

The two juries – with personalities of the caliber of Camilla Baresani, Paolo Mieli, Angela Alberti, Marco Ghedina and Roberto Santachiara – met in recent days in Cortina, remembering with emotion Vera Slepoj, co-founder of the Award and a key figure in Italian culture, who recently passed away. The closing ceremony, with the full reading of the motivations and the meeting with the winners, will be held on Saturday, August 23, at 6:00 p.m., at the Alexander Girardi Hall.