New cogs, hands and flour to il Mulino

On 25 April, Bologna-based cultural political magazine il Mulino celebrates turning seventy with a new-look magazine and website. Issue 513 calls for our democracies to be restored, a subject as relevant today as it was to the publication’s founders in 1951. Taking Riccardo Bacchelli’s three-part saga Il Mulino del Po as inspiration, the post-war editorial team read the cogs and labour, hands and flour of the novels’ mill as a metaphor for pluralism, constitution and democracy. ‘Il Mulino is a republican story,’ says editor in chief Mario Ricciardi, which ‘we continue to write because we believe there’s more need now than ever.’