Lucio Caracciolo

Appreciated journalist, Lucio Caracciolo became a well-known face in the 2020s among fans of in-depth political and current affairs programs. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Caracciolo has appeared more and more frequently than previously, by virtue of his role as geopolitical analyst and editor of the cultural magazine Limes. Let’s see below the professional and personal path of Lucio Caracciolo.

Lucio Caracciolo was born in Rome on February 7, 1954. Even when he was little he showed himself to be a particularly willing and dedicated young man, with a particular inclination for current political issues.

He decides to give concrete results to his interests for the study, focusing on enrollment in the Faculty of Philosophy of the prestigious La Sapienza University of Rome. During his academic studies in the capital he understood that he wanted to start a journalistic career without waiting for the graduation. He therefore already collects some collaboration during his academic commitment.

Once he graduated, he managed to get to the editorial board of the newspaper La Repubblica. At the Italian newspaper – second only to Corriere delle Sera in terms of authority and circulation – he worked for a long time, more precisely from 1976 to 1983.

Within the editorial staff he distinguished himself first as a political reporter, closely following the events of the Italian parliamentary scene; then he made his career and became head of the political editorial staff.

Thanks to the number of articles written in this period, in 1979 he became a professional journalist and enrolled in the professional order of the Lazio region.

Even after leaving La Repubblica, Lucio Caracciolo continues to write editorials and pieces that analyze the evolution of foreign policy on behalf of the L’Espresso Publishing Group, belonging to the same property.

From 1986 and for the next nine years he remained in office as editor-in-chief of MicroMega, a magazine of culture, politics and philosophy with many insights into the issues that are particularly dear to Caracciolo.

The turning point for Lucio Caracciolo’s career came in 1993, when after the fall of the Berlin Wall he founded “Limes”, a geopolitical magazine of which he remained director in the following years. The name derives from the Latin and means border.

In 2000 Lucio Caracciolo joined the editorial staff of the international publication Eurasian Review of Geopolitics Heartland; at the same time he also started his activity at the scientific committee of the Italy-USA Foundation.

In 2002, however, he landed on television, conducting together with Silvestro Montanaro the program C’era una volta – Dagli Appennini alle Ande, which is broadcast on Rai Tre. Within this container, together with various guests, always different, relevant, topical issues in the political, economic and social spheres that characterize the first years of the new millennium are dealt with.

Lucio Caracciolo’s career also sees him engaged as a university professor: in particular he teaches political and economic geography at the University of Roma Tre. In other Italian universities, however, he is known for his intense activity as a geopolitics seminarian.

Furthermore, on behalf of the  Società Italiana per l’organizzazione internazionale, an institute belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he plays the role of president of the master’s degree in Geopolitics.

From the autumn of 2006 he was chosen by the University of San Raffaele in Milan to teach Political and Economic Geography. Three years later the Luiss of Rome, a prestigious private university, called Lucio Caracciolo to teach Strategic Studies. In the following academic year he took part in the didactic project as part of the first master’s degree entirely in English in International Relations, which is always part of the teaching offer of Luiss in Rome.