Benedetta Craveri

Benedetta Craveri embodies the spirit of Europe. As the granddaughter of the intellectual Benedetto Croce and the daughter of the writer Elena Croce and resistance hero Raimondo Craveri, she breathes history and culture. She studied philology, taught French, and wrote passionately about her favourite subject: salons and the sociopolitical power of women in the run-up to the French Revolution. Among her masterpieces are The Age of Conversation (2001), which explores how women in Parisian salons dictated the rules for conversations between writers, philosophers and statesmen, thereby shaping modern society; The Last Libertines (2016), a cultural-critical study in which she chronicles the lives of young aristocrats who found themselves at the crossroads between the era of traditional court culture and the emerging revolutionary ideas; and The Contessa (2026), a biography of Countess Virginia Oldoini of Castiglione, an aristocrat who became a notorious figure in nineteenth-century Europe and was a pioneer in photography. Craveri is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and president of the Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce, one of Italy’s most important cultural institutions.