The Sicilian Institute of Byzantine and Neo-Hellenic Studies "B. Lavagnini ”announces the publication of a new volume by Francesco Scalora in the“ Quaderni ”series, entitled“ Athens 1821-1827 in the Diary of Cesare Vitali ”.
Cesare Vitali, doctor and vice consul of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in Athens in the crucial years of the struggles for the independence of Greece, witnessed the ups and downs that involved the city, from the first attempt at liberation from the Ottoman occupying conquerors, in April 1821. , to the dramatic moments that marked the siege of Athens and the surrender of the Acropolis in May 1827. In the bicentenary of the Greek Risorgimento (1821-2021), his diaries from the papers kept in the State Archives now see the light for the first time of Athens. They constitute a first-hand testimony that allows us to reconstruct, also thanks to the accurate commentary that accompanies them, the picture of a period in many ways still to be investigated - especially in its relations with Italy - while restoring the phylhellenic climate of epoch and the drama of the historical events experienced: facts and events that already resounded in the consciousness of contemporaries like sequences of a great epic.
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