Milan Expo 2015: A Focus on Food

PHOTO: Italy will host the Milan Expo 2015, which will explore relationships, between food, nature, nutrition and sustainability. (Photo by James Ruggia)

The rise of theme parks have stolen some of the dazzle and thunder that Worlds Fairs used to provide, but theme parks aren't the same as World fairs. Strictly speaking, theme parks are designed to entertain, but world fairs not only educate, they bring the world together to explore important thresh holds that the international community needs to face together. Tickets are already on sale for the upcoming Milan Expo 2015. The Expo, which will run from May 1 until Oct. 31, will occupy a space of nearly a million square meters in Europe's top fashion city.

Monograms, which is featuring the Expo in a three-day package, nicely framed the importance of world's fairs in its promotional materials. "The Eiffel Tower, the elevator, the telephone, motion pictures, Cracker Jacks, the Ferris wheel, the fax machine, the electric typewriter, and the ice cream cone-they were all first presented at the world's fairs and expos. What exciting new invention will be presented at the Milan Expo in 2015?"

More countries than ever, 144, will participate in this Expo. They will build their pavilions in such groupings as nutrition, food and sustainability rather than the old formula of geography. The Italian pavilion has already sold 2.5 million tickets. Taken altogether, organizers are promising an experience that will approximate a global journey of food and its lifestyle traditions.

Monogram's three-day, Milan to Milan, which includes hotels, entrance and transfers to/from the Expo and daily breakfast, will be priced at $783 per person double land only. Besides an entrance ticket to EXPO 2015 and centrally located hotels, the package also includes sightseeing with a local guide, inside visits and other special features like transfers to/from the Expo grounds.

PHOTO: The Milan Expo 2015 will cover an area of about a million square meters. (Courtesy of Milan Expo 2015)

Though most of us think of Milan as the city that dresses the planet, the Expo's theme will be Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. Nutrition and the resources of Planet Earth will be explored in what planners say will be a dialogue between international players on these critical subjects. As Andrea Illy, chairman and CEO of illycaffè and a key Expo sponsor sees it, "Expo 2015 represents a truly historic opportunity to showcase on an international level Milan's incredible potential, intrinsic value and inherent beauty."

In a theme that focuses on nutrition, Italy sees an opportunity to frame its food traditions such as slow food that are sustainable, not only ecologically, but also socially. Italian tourism is also hopeful about the impact of the Expo on its fortunes. "We're expecting a million visitors to come to Emilia Romagna from the Expo," said Paolo Bosso, a marketing professional at the Emilia Romagna Turismo. "Milan has limited hotel rooms and we believe we will see some spill over demand for our hotels."

Expo tickets can be bought at www.expo2015.org/en/tickets, the fair's website. The fair itself has created a variety of packages geared toward families with children, over 65s, groups and schools. The average ticket price will be €22 ($28). Organizers hope to attract 20 million visitors from around the world. Five million tickets have already been sold to tour operators.

Though most think of Milan either for fashion or for high finance, as the capital of Lombardy, it's also a gateway to a region rich in natural beauties such as the Italian lakes and more than 250 traditional food specialties including cheeses, cured meats, vegetables, cakes and biscuits, as well as wines.

Milan's first International Exposition took place in 1906 and focused on the theme of transportation. Progress and the role of industry and modernization were the themes of the first World Exhibitions that began in London's Hyde Park in 1851. That tradition was continued in 1853 when President Franklin Pierce helped open the Expo in New York City's Bryant Park. The themes moved into more cultural territories as in the case two more New York World Fairs: 1939's Building the World of Tomorrow and 1964's Peace through Understanding.

Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life is an ideal theme for a world today that fails in feeding most of its people adequately and is in need of a new approach to achieving that, a new approach that may already exist in our oldest traditions. As a guardian of those traditions, Italy is the ideal destination messenger.

UNESCO recently bestowed a recognition on the Mediterranean diet as one of the World's Intangible Cultural Heritages. In May, a survey of ASTA agents named Italy as the destination for the world's best food, for its diversity from region to region, as well as its consistently high quality. Agents cited fresh ingredients and great wine in particular.

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