Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 4 May 2026

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | Online Lecture


Sardinia is justly celebrated for its pristine seascapes, yet this hauntingly beautiful island offers much more: millennia of history and ancient rituals and musical traditions.

Sardinia’s position in the western Mediterranean exposed it to Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, and later European influences, yet its mountainous interior preserved distinct customs, languages, and social structures. Prehistoric nuragic sites point to early settlement patterns, while music, ritual, and seasonal practices reveal how communities adapted to the landscape and scarcity.

The presence of wild horses in the interior is not symbolic but practical, tied to long traditions of land use and mobility. In this lecture, Kate Bolton-Porciatti takes us on a journey through Sardinia, introducing the island through its geography, millennia of history, and ancient rituals and musical traditions.

Beginning along the rugged northern coastline, we then move inland to remote regions shaped by isolation and pastoral life.

LECTURER

Biography

Kate Bolton-Porciatti (MPhil.) is a professor of Italian cultural history at the Istituto Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures regularly at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Academy in Siena. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She has published extensively as an academic, a critic and a journalist. Her MPhil thesis set the music of early 15th-century Florence in its social and cultural context.

Kate Bolton-Porciatti

Cultural Historian