Copenhagen – Melania G. Mazzucco will be in Copenhagen on April 21 as a guest of the Italian Cultural Institute for an evening organized in collaboration with the Società Dante Alighieri Copenhagen. Starting at 6 p.m., the Italian author will be in conversation with publisher and translator Marie Andersen and lecturer PhD Pia Schwarz Lausten. Melania G. Mazzucco will present her novel The Architectress, recently published in Danish (Arkitektinden, Forlaget Palomar, 2025). The novel is set in 17th-century Rome, which under popes and cardinals grows in baroque splendor. Here we meet the brilliant and talented Plautilla Briccio, who paints her first altarpiece, becomes a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and is the first woman to independently design and oversee the construction of a magnificent palace. Mazzucco will discuss the historical novel as a genre, art and architecture, the position of female artists in 17th-century Italy, contemporary Italian literature, and her own writing process. The author will also be a guest on April 22 from 1:15 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Department of English, Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. (9Colonne)