Italia Team will have its Hospitality House for Paris 2024, in the heart of Bois de Boulogne, at one of Olympism’s most symbolic places: the Pré Catelan. The announcement, made today at the press conference at the Italian Embassy in Paris, revealed the location of CONI’s Hospitality House for the Summer Olympic Games, set to take place in the French capital from Friday, 26 July to Sunday, 11 August next year.

In the evocative setting of the Embassy’s Sicilian Theatre, the agreement was made official for Italy’s Casa Italia, first conceived on the occasion of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, becoming over the years, part of the team and country’s Olympic identity.

The conference was attended by Emanuela D'Alessandro, Italian Ambassador to France, Giovanni Malagò, CONI President, Olivier Voarick, CEO Maison LENÔTRE and Andrea Varnier, CEO of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Games Foundation.

Casa Italia will be based in the Pré Catelan, a Napoleon III-style pavilion in the surrounds of the city’s largest park, the Bois de Boulogne, five minutes from the Champs Elysées, in a suggestive setting with well-lit rooms due to the many large windows and adjacent gardens.

Inaugurated in 1856, the Pré Catelan was an immediate success, quickly becoming one of the most frequented venues in the French capital, but it was on the evening of 23 June 1894 that the stylish pavilion became indelibly stamped in the pages of international sporting history.

A few hours earlier, at the first Olympic Congress held in Paris, the Comité International Olympique was conceived, with Baron Pierre de Coubertin who, within the walls of La Sorbonne University, had illustrated his most ambitious project: to re-establish the ancient Olympic Games. On that day, a milestone was reached in Olympic history with a new era set in motion, which was celebrated with a sumptuous banquet set up in one of the twelve reception rooms of the Pré Catelan.

One hundred and thirty years later, the Casa Italia Paris 2024 project fittingly gets underway from France’s cradle of Olympism, on a journey in which we reflect on the friendship and fraternity of those who journey alongside us towards the future, but also those who have passed before and whose common identity helped forge a nation.

“I am very pleased to host the signing of the project for the construction of Casa Italia for the next Olympic Games in Paris 2024. A ‘historic’ occasion we could say as it is the first time in CONI history that the agreement takes place in the city hosting the Olympic Games,” said Emanuela D’Alessandro, Ambassador of Italy to France. “Sport is a central element in international and diplomatic relations and is a tool with which to strengthen and improve them. Because, as was recently outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Antonio Tajani, ‘Sport unites us and is an example of Italy’s organisational capacity and enviable industrial sector’.”

“I have come to Paris several times to make inspections, we have seen different places but from the beginning I thought that Pré Catelan was not only the best place for Casa Italia, but ‘the’ place,” noted CONI President Giovanni Malagò. “There is a romantic history that links Pré Catelan with antiquity. In this place Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s intuition about the Olympic Games was celebrated as a brilliant, far-sighted idea; after all, he was a dreamer. Casa Italia today is a registered and internationally recognised brand. We have come a long way since Los Angeles 1984: I am thinking in particular of the most recent editions, in Tokyo and Beijing, in a surreal context we were able to provide a safe refuge to our athletes, technicians, federations and the companies that have invested in us. Casa Italia is an example of the Committee’s true excellence.”

“You have fulfilled a dream for us too. We are really thrilled,” underlined Olivier Voarick, CEO Maison LENÔTRE. “The great Paris 2024 event is approaching and I’m very fortunate to be associated with a great country like Italy. We have the ambition to stand together, to be true to the values of LENÔTRE and Casa Italia. We want to be unique and we will be unique. We want to be inspired and generous. We want to receive many people every night but we will be environmentally friendly. And we also have the ambition to unite the two best gastronomies in the world. We want to organise one of the most beautiful Casa Italia of any of the Olympics.”

“Sport can help men to overcome their limitations, but also bring them together and understand each other better, regardless of their differences,” argued de Coubertin in a France that had made fraternity one of the pillars of the nation born out of the Revolution.

Of the three terms that give life to the motto “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, it is the latter that leaves the most room for imagination. “Friendship is the true homeland”, wrote Joseph Roth. And fraternity links peoples, just as friendship links individuals: on the competitive Olympics field, in the gesture that becomes a model and an education.

The idea of Casa Italia Paris 2024 encompasses all this. It will be entitled Ensemble and will define the concept of an ensemble, at various levels, as a necessary condition for fostering collaboration, community and reason.

Ensemble, understood not only as the condition of proximity and a meeting point, but as a term that brings with it impartiality, resulting from togetherness. A search for agreement and harmony that is indispensable for achieving a common goal.

This is why Ensemble is Sport, the protagonist of the Olympics. Ensemble is the community of athletes and the peoples taking part in it. Ensemble is building the common good. Ensemble is sharing. Ultimately, through all the means we have available today, Ensemble is social and environmental sustainability: issues which, only when tackled collectively, can results be achieved. Ensemble is working to build peace, and lastly, Ensemble is the Olympics, the noblest expression of brotherhood.

Casa Italia will bring the value of Ensemble by means of art, architecture, design, and hospitality; celebrating athletes in a context where each element will be able to tell how the fraternal utopia can become a tangible reality – thanks especially to the Olympics.

This is why the unifying theme of interwovenness has been chosen for the décor of the installations at Pré Catelan, expressed through the presence of fabrics and textures, whose very nature – by means of knotted lines – signify the value of “building together”. In line with these principles, a sequence of spaces has been envisaged within the pavilion, conceived as “a room within a room” in which, through interwoven threads, new dialogues open within the existing ones, based on principles of mutual exaltation and respect.

Design, one of Italy’s hallmark commodities around the world, a symbol of artisanship and attention to detail, will be in full function as it welcomes guests into the House, contributing to the accommodative experience that Italy always seeks to convey.

By means of works of art from contemporary Italian artists, present in all the rooms of the House, the Ensemble concept will be rendered visibly memorable. The artists featured will include Riccardo Previdi, Julie Polidoro, Fabio Viale, Marinella Senatore, Patrick Tuttofuoco, to name but a few.

Ensemble is also a sustainable project. Temporary set-ups often waste a great deal of energy and materials, but Casa Italia, which had already begun to address the issue of sustainability when it was set up in Tokyo in 2020, will now be designed with the intention of recovering and recycling all the materials involved.

Casa Italia, for a long time exclusively a hospitality venue, since 2016 has become a promotional hub for Italy, on a world stage with the unparalleled media impact generated by the Olympic Games.

Our history - from the Villanovan to the Etruscans, from the Renaissance to a multi-ethnic society, our geography and landscapes, our unique and incomparable places, art, literature, music, architecture, our villages, mountains, sea, animal and plant biodiversity, and science, are the elements underpinning the wonder of Casa Italia. A place where these excellences will find space to tell their story and to visually illustrate the uniqueness of Italy’s human, cultural and geophysical dimensions. All this without ever forgetting the true heart of the mission: the Italia Team athletes, who will live the most thrilling sporting experience of their lives and who are celebrated at Casa Italia.

The presentation of Casa Italia was held, for the first time in CONI history, in the host city, exactly a thousand days ahead of the forthcoming edition of the Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina 2026, with Casa Italia Paris 2024 becoming a sort of prelude to the celebration of the next Italian Winter Olympics.

“For me it is a great honour; it is really exciting to be here,” admitted Andrea Varnier, CEO of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Games Foundation. “Today is an important date for us, there are one thousand days left until our Olympic Games. It seems like a lot but it is not, I can assure you. Today is also an occasion to celebrate our Games: they will be special because for the first time in history two cities are involved, Milan and Cortina, but also our valleys. In this scenario Casa Italia is an extraordinary communication and marketing platform for those who have decided to accompany us on this journey. Once the Paris Games are over, it will really be our turn: we will be present at Casa Italia, in Pré Catelan, to launch the Milano-Cortina Olympics.” (agc)

(Photo Xavier Granet CONI)