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Why Cagli?
Story by Katie Cook

 

Want to study Italian? How about Rome, Florence, Venice or … Cagli? Competing with major cities is the biggest obstacle Cagli’s Instituto di Langua Italiana faces. Francesco Mansi, the current director of the institute, has moved that this challenge can be overcome.

While working in an Italian language school in Urbania, Mansi and two of his co-workers were frustrated with the leaders of the Urbania school. One colleague, Umbretta Michelini suggested that she, Mansi, and Christina Antoniucci create their own institute. Mansi and Antoniucci loved the idea.

Mansi said that teaching Italian to foreigners was always his love and passion in life. He had spent 20 years living in the United States earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He taught high school and college-level Italian in New Jersey for over 10 years. But though he loved America, he felt the desire to return to Italy with his wife Donna Galletta, a native of Philadelphia.

“If I had two lives to live, I would live one in the United States and one in Italy,” Mansi said.

When Mansi returned to Italy, he began teaching Italian at private language schools and ended up in Urbania. He prefers teaching at language schools rather than high schools or colleges because the students at language schools are paying to learn Italian rather than being forced to. Opening a language institute where he could teach such students in his style was a dream come true.

Mansi’s first task was to find a location. Michelini, who has since left the institute, was living in Cagli at the time and suggested they look there. Mansi loved the idea of a small town because he said it provides a better learning environment.

“It is my belief that if a student wants to learn the language, they must go to a small town. To have a good time, you go to a big city,” Mansi said. Cagli provided the perfect environment.

The search in Cagli ended when the trio found the Atrium. The building had been home to a seminary but was closed for lack of students entering the priesthood. It became a factory for a short time but shut down around 1963. Mansi, Antoniucci and Michelini contacted the administrator to inquire about renting it.

The interior of the building appealed to the professors’ vision. It had a long hallway and small rooms that had formerly been bedrooms. The large hallway provided students with a place to socialize, and the small rooms made classrooms.

The professors all believed in small classes to ensure the individual attention needed to learn a language effectively. Mansi and his colleagues also loved the building’s closeness to the piazza, which they consider to be “the language lab.”
 

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