The 40th Anniversary of Twinning Between Nanjing and Florence & Culture Week kicks off Friday afternoon at The Oriental Metropolitan Museum, Nanjing. Among the guests present at the ceremony were Han Liming, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee and secretary of the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee, and Luca Ferrari, Italian Ambassador to China. Li Junhua, Ambassador of China to Italy and Dario Nardella, Mayor of Florence delivered online speeches.
Nanjing and Florence is the first pair of sister cities between Jiangsu and Europe. 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Italy as well as the 40th anniversary of the sister-city relations between Nanjing and Florence, Italy. The celebration was supposed to be held in 2020 but was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the opening ceremony, Nanjing and Florence signed the Agreement on Further Friendly Cooperation. The opening ceremony also saw the release of the Nanjing-Florence Tourism Revival Plan as well as signing of cooperation projects. Chief Executive of Xuanwu District introduced its cooperation with Italy in recent years.
The opening ceremony starts with a video telling stories of friendly relations of the two cities in the past 40 years. Two narrators from Nanjing and Florence started a conversation across the boundaries of time and space.
The guests then also visited the newly-established Changjiang Road D9 Block. Serial events including China-Italy food festival, fashion show, music performance and cuisine master chef class will be staged here during the three-day event, to further promote mutual understanding and consumption enthusiasm through joint efforts of both cities.
Year 1980 saw the sister city twinning between Nanjing, China and Florence, Italy. As the very first pair of sister-city twinned between Jiangsu and Europe, as well as the third pair between China and Europe, Nanjing and Florence have carried out extensive exchanges and cooperation and achieved fruitful results in trade and commerce, science and technology, education and culture, public health and sports as well as city construction and innovation ever since the twinning.
