La nostra storia

The long history of Prometeo began in March 1983, when Arnoldo Mondadori Editore sent to newsstands a glossy magazine, very different from all the others: a quarterly magazine of high level not academic but certainly highly educated, that gathered around it some of the best European intellectuals of the time. The pages was designed by a graphic illustrator John Alcorn.

The credit for the whole initiative belongs to Prof. Valerio Castronovo, in 1980s young but already a professor at the University of Turin and a specialist in the history of economics. Together with him, a group of scholars, including the psychobiologist Alberto Oliverio, gave life to a publishing experience destined to last for many decades, with the strong idea of offering quality content in different fields of knowledge: from history to philosophy, from the humanities to the more properly hard sciences, from literature to art (which Pepa Sparti, who later became editor of the magazine, dealt with extensively).

Prometeo has hosted some of the most original contributions, both Italian and international: from Norberto Bobbio to Luciano Gallino, from Claude Lévy-Strauss to Michel Foucault, from Jacques Le Goff to Immanuel Wallerstein, from Marcel Detienne to William Newton-Smith. The imprint they leaved is vivid. They constituted a valuable testimony to their present they had been practicing on, almost always in a multidisciplinary key: the breaking down of old fences between domains of knowledge is in fact the real spark that Prometeo brings as a gift to readers.

Prometeo’s adventure has continued under the direction of Gabriella Piroli. From 2021, the magazine has Scientific Direction – made up of Sabina Pavone, Severino Salvemini and Giorgio Vallortigara – as well as a large and very authoritative Editorial Committee: it is possible to read the biographies of each on this same website. 2024 Is also shaping up as a year of further change. From a corporate point of view, because the Mondadori Media edition ceases and a path of autonomy and independence begins. But above all, because the prestigious print edition, which will continue to be the beating heart of the magazine, is now joined by digital editions in Italian and English: a choice to encourage access to new generations and, at the same time, an arc drawn for the international potential that Prometeo allows to be cultivated.