Orazio La Rocca

TRAVELING WITH THE PIETÀ Michelangelo’s Masterpiece at the 1964 New York Universal Exhibition

1st edition February 2024
Series ATTUALITÀ E STORIA
Size 14 x 21 cm

Also available in eBook format

Number of pages 240
CDU 95A 275
ISBN/EAN 9788892243767

95A 275
Orazio La Rocca
TRAVELING WITH THE PIETÀ
Michelangelo’s Masterpiece at the 1964 New York Universal Exhibition
Foreword by Barbara Jatta
Afterword by Massimiliano Fuksas


The book tells in a compelling way the incredible but also criticized journey of Michelangelo’s Pietà from St. Peter’s Basilica to New York for the 1964 Universal Exhibition. It all begins on April 4, the day on which the sculpture, for the first and the only time, leaves the Vatican and is loaded onto a truck headed for Naples, where it will arrive after about twelve hours of travel in low gear. Waiting for the precious cargo along the port quay is the Cristoforo Colombo, on whose deck the coffin with the Pietà will be placed in the open air and fixed in such a way as to be able to withstand any stress and monitored closely throughout the crossing. After about eight days of sailing, the arrival in New York, where the Pietà was placed in the Holy See Pavilion of the 1964 Universal Exhibition, which until the following October would be visited by over 27 million people fascinated by Michelangelo’s work. Through the voices of witnesses, Orazio La Rocca makes us relive, with a certain trepidation, the preparations for the trip, the daring transatlantic crossing, the media outcry aroused by the initiative, the nostalgia for the absence from San Pietro of that beloved sculpture and finally, after nineteen months, its happy return to the Vatican. Orazio La Rocca retraces this extraordinary journey with a journalistic attitude, bringing to light the voices for and against the undertaking, starting from whoever had the original idea of making Michelangelo’s Pietà the star of the New York Expo, regardless of the dangers which the marble group would have encountered.


ORAZIO LA ROCCA (Itri, 1950) is married and father of 5 children. He graduated in Architecture at the Valle Giulia Faculty of Rome. For over four decades Vatican correspondent for the daily newspaper La Repubblica, he has also written for L’Espresso, Panorama, Famiglia Cristiana, Il Messaggero, L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio, and the Social Communication Office of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. With Edizioni San Paolo he has published L’anno dei tre Papi (2018) and Ratzinger, la scelta. «Non sono scappato» (2023).


Selling points


• On the 60th anniversary of the journey of the Pietà, a compelling story, historically
        accurate and with the testimonies of the protagonists.
• A volume enriched by texts by Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums,
        and Massimiliano Fuksas, world-famous architect.
• Engaging journalistic style.