I’ve been doing this job for many years.
This job means to think, to travel, to be a photographer and to write.
I’ve done it with a lot of passion for many different media: books, newspapers, magazines, radio and television. But the idea has always been the same: to try to understand a place and to overcome as much as possible conventions and stereotypes. And to describe it in the best possible way, then.
It’s therefore a beautiful and interesting job. A job that forces you to study, to analyse and most of all to travel with an open mind and no preconceptions.
My passions are very different from one another, and they have interchanged during the years. Caves and mountains have been the first, followed and befriended by the love for hiking on the great roads and by the passion for the undergrounds and for history. Alongside these subjects in my professional life I have worked on so many other different things, and of many subjects I have necessarily become an expert. But I believe that moving from the parks in the Borneo to the tunnel under the English Channel, from the parietal churches of the Murgia to the Templars and to the Nicaragua Canal helps me keeping alive the passion, one day after the other. And that’s something that definitely means a lot.
Fabrizio Ardito, journalist and photographer born in Rome in 1957, since his early years has been possessed by the demon of passion for speleology and by the fascination for all the subterranean places. A ‘trekking lover’, in the last years he has travelled on paths of faiths and history, as the Sentier Cathar, the Via Francigena, the tracks of Mount Athos and the Adrian Wall.
Author of several books on hiking, of the Guide on Caves and Canyons of Italy (Mursia), of the book of novels ‘Di Pietra e D’acqua’ (Vivalda), of two Week End volumes edited by Gambero Rosso, of a dozen guides from the series Guide Visuali Mondadori – Dorling & Kindersley (of which several editions have been published in Italy and abroad) and of ‘La Ricerca di Eva, Viaggio Alle Origini Dell’Uomo Moderno’ (with Daniele Minerva, ed. Giunti).
He has also written the coffee table book “Italia Sotterranea”, on hypogea of the art cities of the Belpaese.
He has worked with Guide APA on the volume Sardinia. For the Cooperativa la Montagna of Rome he has written two guides dedicated to the Parco del Treja and to the Parco di Monte Mario. For Enit he has cured the guide Sentieri, for Vivalda the guide Quattro Passi da Roma and he has also been the curator of the 12 editions of the film fair on mountain and adventure in Rome, Naples and Milan.
For the Touring Club Italiano has written the volumes Peregrinos, Fortezze dell’Eresia and Lungo la Francigena (edition Reportage 2000). Of the series Guide Verdi he has written the guides on Cyprus, Camino de Santiago, Livorno, Austria, Tunisia, Campania, Roma and many more. With Touring Club he has also published the coffee table books Cammino di Santiago and Via Francigena and with the association Civita he has published two volumes on the Via Emilia and on the Roman consular roads. He has taught in several education courses, among which the Course on Environmental Journalism “Laura Conti” organized by La Nuova Ecologia.
He has worked and still works for several Italian magazines on environment, geography and travels like Nuova Ecologia, GEO, Espresso, Gambero Rosso, Qui Touring, Plein Air, Giorgio Mondadori, Meridiani, Viaggi del Gusto, Weekend-Viaggi, Alp, Rivista della Montagna e Unità. He has also worked with RAI for the realization of several documentaries on nature and sport. With Daniele Valentini he has been the curator of four special editions of the TG1 on the undergrounds of Rome, Naples, Sulcis and Umbria.
