On Friday, Feb. 6, when the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Olympics starts at the San Siro at 8 p.m., there will be a place to follow it for free: a theater. The event has not been organized by the City of Milan, which by contract cannot spend money on the Games, but by Pride House, a newly opened space at the Meet Digital Culture Center on Via Vittorio Veneto in Porta Venezia.
The first Olympic ceremony open to all
The screening will be broadcast live in the Meet theater, while RAI is sending it on Rai 1. Anyone who wishes to attend will be able to enter without a ticket. A detail that also assumes value in reference to the “Prima Diffusa” at La Scala: every year, for more than ten years, the most exclusive evening of Milanese culture has been screened in more than thirty venues in the city, turning into an event open to everyone. For the Olympics, no one had thought of something similar. Pride House did.
After the screening, the theater will host alternating Lgbtq+ and migrant choirs, a common thread running through the entire Pride House program, active through Feb. 22.
Porta Venezia and the Olympic Pride Houses
The first Pride Houses were born at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics: spaces dedicated to Lgbtq+ athletes and visitors. Paris 2024 also had one. Milan carries on this tradition in the heart of Porta Venezia, a neighborhood symbolic of the city’s Lgbtq+ community.
The initiative is organized by Arcigay and CIG Arcigay Milano, which has been active for over forty years, together with Pride Sport Milano, a network that brings together twenty-three Lgbtq+ teams in eleven disciplines. People who play sports every day in ordinary gyms and know how much prejudice still weighs.
Not everywhere have Pride Houses been welcomed. In Sochi 2014, a Russian judge blocked their creation, just days after the law against the “propaganda” of nontraditional relationships was passed, arguing that it would “undermine the security of Russian society.” Those who tried to organize alternative events were persecuted.
Live quizzes, movies and sports
From Feb. 6 to 22, the Pride House will be open as a lounge Tuesday through Sunday, with talks and meetings with athletes, and competitions can be followed in real time. On Friday and Saturday nights, the Meet Theater will host films and performances.
On Sunday, Feb. 8, at 7 p.m., Queer Olympic Quiz Night will feature fifty minutes of quizzes on sports and the Lgbtq+ community, with stories and trivia “that team up,” organizers explain. On Feb. 14, Le rendez-vous de l’été, a tragicomedy set in Paris during the 2024 Olympics, will be screened, starring Blandine, who arrived from Normandy to follow swimming.
The full program is online. The Meet is located at 2 Vittorio Veneto Street, a few minutes’ walk from Oberdan Square.
