Pavia Innovation Week: five guided tours to discover the city that invented the future

From 10 to 12 April 2026, as part of the Pavia Innovation Week, the historic centre of Pavia becomes a living itinerary through science, history and innovation. Five guided walking tours — free of charge, each lasting 90 minutes — invite residents and visitors to rediscover the places where great minds have left traces still visible in the city's walls, courtyards, gardens and streets.

These are not traditional museum visits. They are narrative walks that connect physical spaces with human stories, linking Pavia's scientific and industrial heritage to the questions of the present day.

Friday 10 April — Vittorio Necchi. When industry meets innovation

The first itinerary begins at Piazza Collegio Cairoli at 3.30 pm and retraces the story of one of the most important entrepreneurial families in twentieth-century Lombardy. From Via San Martino, where the Necchi family put down its first roots, to the sewing machine factory near Piazza Emanuele Filiberto, on to the Supernova area — a former industrial site where thousands of workers were employed — and finally to the Broletto. A route that tells the story of an Italy reinventing itself through industry, and that invites visitors to ask what remains of that era in the city today.

Saturday 11 April — Between neurons and relativity. Golgi, Einstein and the city that welcomed them both

Marking the 120th anniversary of Camillo Golgi's Nobel Prize and recalling Albert Einstein's early years in Pavia, this itinerary begins at 10.00 am in the Cortile delle Statue of the Central University. The route visits the letters the young Einstein wrote to the Chamber of Commerce — at a time when the theory of relativity was still only an intuition — the Palazzo Cornazzani where he lived at sixteen, and the Museo Golgi, home to the instruments that made nerve cells visible for the first time. It closes by the Ticino river, in front of the plaque that marks the passage of one of the minds that reshaped modern physics forever.

Saturday 11 April — Once upon a time. A journey through the life and ideas of Alessandro Volta

The second Saturday itinerary, meeting at the Cortile delle Statue at 3.30 pm, reveals a Volta quite different from the austere figure on the banknotes: an ambitious man, obsessively curious, capable of fierce rivalries and complicated loves. The route passes through the Aula Volta, where the famous dispute with Galvani over animal electricity took place, and the Teatro Fraschini, the elegant social stage of a years-long love story. Pavia was the city where Volta lived, taught, and became a legend.

Saturday 11 April — Botanical Enlightenment

At 4.00 pm, meeting at the entrance to the Botanical Garden, this tour — the only one conducted entirely in English — illustrates how the University of Pavia and its Botanical Institute were central to Enlightenment science, thanks to the ideas and work of figures such as Lazzaro Spallanzani, Giovanni Antonio Scopoli and Alessandro Volta. The itinerary explores the scientific method as applied to botany, the birth of microbiology, the contributions of van Leeuwenhoek and Pasteur, and the big questions surrounding biodiversity and the future of botanical science.

Sunday 12 April — Pavia: a laboratory of ideas. A journey through the architectures that changed the world

The final itinerary, on Sunday 12 April at 11.00 am, begins at Largo Angelo Grilli in Piazza Castello and may be the most ambitious in its perspective. Some cities preserve the past: in this walk, Pavia is presented as a city that invented it. From the Castello Visconteo — the first aristocratic residence to display power rather than conceal it — to the University founded in 1361; from the San Matteo hospital, where physical space became a tool of healing, to the geometry of Santa Maria di Canepanova; and finally to the Collegio Ghislieri, which opened its doors first to deserving students of modest means and later to women. Not a journey through antiquity, but through audacity.

How to take part

All tours are free and places are limited. Booking is required and can be done through the official festival website, www.paviainnovationweek.it. Participants are asked to arrive 15 minutes before the start time. The routes are on foot through the historic centre, departing from the meeting points indicated for each tour.

The Pavia Innovation Week is promoted by the Chamber of Commerce of Cremona–Mantova–Pavia, with the support of Unioncamere and the Fondazione Monte di Lombardia, in collaboration with Corriere della Sera  items-center
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