The magic of reading comes to Teatro Ciak in Rome with a new Mondadori Store bookshop, which will be inaugurated on Friday 8 May.

An area dedicated to books and entertainment will be created next to the 400-seat theatre on Via Cassia, enhancing the audience experience at one of the most important cultural centres in Municipio 15, through the support of the largest network of bookshops in Italy.

With a floor area of 120 square metres and a modern layout, the new Mondadori Bookstore at Teatro Ciak was designed to meet the needs of a diverse range of customers. Readers will have access to a catalogue of around 8,000 titles, ranging from the great classics to bestsellers, with a selection spanning fiction, nonfiction and various other works.

The space will serve as a bookshop, exhibition area and meeting place all in one. It will feature a section dedicated to the historical Gialli Mondadori series and will also have a café. This exciting new addition will complement the theatre programme, which is already very popular with audiences, together with acting workshops, multidisciplinary events, film festivals and exhibitions.

Teatro Ciak thus confirms its status as a dynamic, multipurpose cultural centre, where culture and art come together as tools for wellbeing, social interaction, personal growth and engagement with the local community – thanks in part to the new Mondadori Bookstore.

‘When we renovated the former Cinema Ciak in 2017, we created a foyer with the idea of creating a multifunctional space for readings and acting classes, but our dream was to create a proper bookshop,’ say Michele Montemagno and Linda Manganelli, the founders and managers of Teatro Ciak. ‘In a vast neighbourhood of northern Rome, we firmly believe that the theatre and bookshop are essential services for all citizens. If theatre stirs our emotions and books encourage us to dream, we believe that imagination can take shape in a space that is open to the community, fostering a culture that is increasingly accessible and inclusive.’

The bookshop will stock all the latest releases, with thematic areas designed to cater to the tastes of every reader. There will be no shortage of crime novels, which are a hallmark of Teatro Ciak, just like the section dedicated to theatre and poetry.

There will also be plenty of space set aside for younger visitors, with the We are Junior section, which offers educational games and picture books to spark little ones’ imaginations, and the Just Comics section dedicated to manga and comics. A selection of stationery, toys, gadgets and gift cards rounds out the offer.

The Mondadori Bookstore at Teatro Ciak also serves readers online, as they can keep up to date through the Instagram and Facebook pages. In addition, customers will be able to contact the bookshop via the digital mondadoristore.it services to check the availability of a book. The bookstore will also offer customers the opportunity to place orders via phone. Services include Zeercle, where people can sell their books, as well as CDs, vinyl records, video games, DVDs and Blu-rays, receiving a gift card for the value of the items in return, for use in bookshops and on the website mondadoristore.it.

MONDADORI BOOKSTORE
Address: Via Cassia 692, 00189, Rome, RM
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–13:00 / 16:00–19:00
Tel: 06/33249268
Email: mondadori@teatrociakroma.it
IG – FB

Mondadori Store is the largest bookstore network in Italy, with more than 500 stores in large cities and smaller towns. Cultural centres throughout the country operating under the Mondadori Bookstore brand, both directly managed and franchises, alongside the bookshops owned by Mondadori Bookstore | MA, Mondadori Duomo and Rizzoli Milano. Mondadori Store can be found online at its e-commerce site, Mondadoristore.it, and through its book club.

Teatro Ciak: the history

Teatro Ciak is a 400-seat venue that opened in November 2018. The goal of the restoration project was to preserve a venue for variety shows that first opened in the 1950s as Teatro Cassio, and then later became Cinema Ciak, a historic cinema in the Cassia district that was open until 2016.

After the cinema closed, the space was revitalised as a venue dedicated to culture, art and entertainment in the Via Cassia area of Rome, a neighbourhood rich in historical and artistic heritage but which lacked proper spaces for the cultural life of residents.

The Teatro Ciak stage has hosted numerous prestigious companies and artists such as Gabriele Lavia, Mariano Rigillo, Glauco Mauri, Roberto Sturno, Milena Vukotic, Cicci Rossini, Paola Gassman, Anna Galiena, Caterina Murino, Debora Caprioglio, Maurizio Micheli, Antonello Fassari, Giuseppe Pambieri, Paola Quattrini, Erica Blanc and many others.

Since 2022, the artistic director of the theatre has been Maestro Mariano Rigillo, ‘an extraordinarily great actor who has created sophisticated programmes that celebrate “teatro di parola”, new drama, young talent and leading contemporary actors and playwrights’ (2023 Enriquez Award for Artistic Direction of Teatro Ciak).

Today, Teatro Ciak is a leading cultural venue in the city, offering not only evening performances, but also matinees for schools, a literary café, educational activities, seminars and readings.

Amid this backdrop, a partnership with the historical Teatro Stabile del Giallo theatre company was formed. For twenty years, the company has been a key cultural institution in the area and, since 2018, has staged its productions at Teatro Ciak. Performances such as ‘12 Angry Men’, ‘A Perfect Murder’, ‘The Spiral Staircase’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’, ‘Rope’, ‘And Then There Were None’, ‘The Visitor’ and ‘The Mousetrap’ have been met with extraordinary acclaim from both audiences and critics over the years.

This collaboration also led to the creation of Accademia del Teatro Ciak, which has around 120 members who offer acting and performing arts workshops for all age groups.