Through conferences and residencies, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center brings together people of diverse expertise and backgrounds in a thought-provoking and collaborative environment to promote innovation and impact on a wide range of global issues.
We have seen the powerful results of investing in and unleashing human capacity. The Bellagio experience fosters a robust exchange of ideas between scientists and artists, theorists and practitioners, those who make policy and those who are affected by it.
Located in northern Italy, the Center infuses unorthodox, radical thinking into searches for solutions to critical social, political, health, environmental and economic challenges.
It encourages all to debate on globally relevant issues and push the boundaries of collective knowledge to translate theory into action.
The History
The Rockefeller Foundation’s proud history with the Bellagio Center began in 1959, when Ella Holbrook Walker offered her Italian villa “for purposes connected with the promotion of international understanding,” and Dean Rusk, the Foundation’s president, accepted her generous donation and embraced its enormous potential.
Here we support innovations and collaborations that change the way we solve global problems.
During the more than 50 years since, the Bellagio Center has served as a backdrop for many meaningful advances. The Center was the birthplace of ideas that underpin modern systems of international finance. It was a staging ground for efforts to mobilize an agricultural revolution that saved a billion lives in Latin America and Asia. It was the setting for negotiations and agreements that make it easier for people suffering from HIV/AIDS and other devastating afflictions to access better vaccines and medications, more efficiently, in more places.
Today the world faces new economic challenges, different social strains, and unprecedented environmental threats. Therefore, the Bellagio Center’s work—and way of working—has never been more significant. The Center cross-pollinates disparate traditions of expertise, inquiry and innovation. It brings people together from countries far and wide, inspring them to find common ground.
More on the History of the Bellagio Center
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| The First 50 Years | A Brief History |
