10 years of Terzo Paradiso/Third Paradise at Forte di Exilles

Coltivare Cultura per costruire la Pace/ Growing Culture to build peace
10 years of Third Paradise at Forte di Exilles
6 July 2025 Exilles -Torino

The thought of artists, starting from Michelangelo Pistoletto, candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize 2025, can nourish the aspiration for a better, desirable, possible future, inviting every individual to be an active protagonist of social change.
Pistoletto’s Third Paradise project, which became an immense shared Oper-Action after its presentation at the 2005 Venice Biennale, in collaboration between the Education Department of Castello di Rivoli and Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, followed in 2012 by the birth of the Ambassadors’ Network, is realizing in Italy and in the world real transformation-Actions that are recognized in the sign/symbol, aimed at making our Planet better and more livable starting from the relationships between people and communities.
In Exilles, since 2015, with a community action, the Third Paradise of eleven thousand lavenders was born, which renews its gaze and its promise every year: it blooms again every year on the embankment of the Fort and in fact brings an epochal change, from a military fortress to a symbol of peace and rebirth, an indelible trace in the territory in the name of harmony and balance.

The project was supported by the institutional partnership of the MIUR-Regional School Office General Management and an inter-institutional collaboration led by the Municipality of Exilles with the Union of Municipalities of the Alta Valle di Susa, the Superintendence of Fine Arts and Landscape of Turin, the Departments of Culture and the Environment of the Piedmont Region, the Alta Valle Susa Forestry Consortium, the Castello di Rivoli and the Rotary Club Susa Val Susa.
With the appointment of 6 July 2025, a new multi-year training course will begin that will involve the schools of the Valley starting from the involvement with the partner subjects: participatory actions to be protagonists and at the same time be part of a heterogeneous group that grows in harmony, for the inclusion and overcoming of conflicts, prejudices and discrimination through the experience of art. Art promotes the construction of bridges between different cultures and worldviews to create spaces for dialogue, mutual understanding and critical thinking, necessary to respond to the challenges of contemporaneity.
Michelangelo Pistoletto is a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize 2025: it is a recognition not only of his artistic talent, but also of the artist’s work of raising awareness for a more just and peaceful world involving the younger generations. With the concept of preventive peace, the artist invites us to act today to avoid the conflicts of the future.

This message resonates with the Third Paradise created in 2024 by the Maestro with the Monks of the Novalesa Abbey, using the resulting materials from archaeological excavations: a dialogue with nature, in which everything is a resource, which makes the formula of balance, harmony and peace visible.
Maestro Pistoletto will be present on July 6 in Exilles to celebrate 10 years since the creation of the Third Paradise work in conversation with the jurist and Professor Gustavo Zagrebelsky, creator President of Biennale Democrazia, whose ninth edition, held last March, was dedicated to the theme Wars and Peace.
The Occitan Duo Garbati will be the soundtrack of the meeting, with Giorgio Ferraris and Oscar Franzin with hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes, accompanied by the percussionist Adalberto Rismondo, who will perform in a concert of songs in memory of Alberto Dotta, former director of the Forestry Consortium and soul of the project.
The Third Paradise of lavender at the Exilles Fort is a network project shared with the students of the secondary schools of the Susa Valley.

Collaborations:
Comune di Exilles
Regione Piemonte
Consorzio Forestale Alta Val di Susa
Pro Loco Exilles
Comunità Montana Alta Valle di Susa
Dipartimento Educazione Castello di Rivoli
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto Biella
Biennale Democrazia
CCW – Cultural Welfare Center
Borgate dal Vivo
Duo Occitano Garbati
Rotary Club Valle di Susa
RotarAct Valle di Susa
FAI Valle di Susa
Rete degli Ambasciatori del Terzo Paradiso
CiAL – Consorzio Imballaggio Alluminio