My interest in the history of Antiquity and the Latin language blossomed into a love of Mediterranean culture and especially of Italy. At the beginning of my studies, I majored in Classical Antiquity, and I took two courses at the Finnish Institute in Rome, one short and one a whole semester long.

From the university notice board I also discovered the opportunity to participate in an archaeological dig in Cerveteri, Etruria, with the Gruppo Archeologico Romano. As even my Interrail holidays tended to concentrate on Italy, my facility with the language had eventually reached the stage where I was able to work as interpreter on a six-week field trip for a Forest Economics and Marketing graduate who was writing a thesis on how Italian door, window, and furniture manufacturers used Finnish wood. Even Italy’s industrial estates abounded with Italians with a love of culture and human interaction, and it finally dawned on me that the attraction of Italy wasn’t merely my interest in its art and culture.

One of my most fascinating projects at the Heureka Science Centre has been to design and script a programme on the Italian renaissance for the largest projection screen in Finland, the 500 square metre dome of Heureka’s Verne Theatre. This was before digital technology, so the programme was composed of full-frame fish-eye lens slides combined with moving pictures in a three-screen video panorama.

Here in Finland I have been able to deepen my interest in Italy through the Società Dante Alighieri. We have played host to Italian experts on their country’s language, culture, and society, such as film directors, historians, literature scholars, and also to the director of a museum of counterfeits, a visually impaired lawyer from Rome, a science clown, Sardinian tenors, and the first Italian woman to hold a commercial pilot licence.

Strong collaboration with Italy has also been a feature of my day job, especially in connection with the new building project of MuSe (Museo delle Scienze) or the Science Museum of Trento. I was then a member of their vision team, and today I sit on their Scientific Committee, with international cooperation as my brief.