The oldest is a 1921 Manufrance Hirondelle Rétro-Directe: by pedaling backward, you still move forward, but with a lighter gear ratio. The most recent is the New01Bike by indexlab-eXgineering from 2022: the world's first frame built from neutral recycled and recyclable polycarbonate and printed in 3D using the Ram (Robotic additive moulding) process. The most hybrid is the 1982 Puch Concept '82: a monoblock aluminum die-cast frame that is simultaneously a road bike, city bike, and mountain bike.

On Saturday, September 5th, the exhibition "Spokes of Design – Bicycles Between Ingenuity, Art and Innovation from the Carosini Collection" opens in the former Colonia Pavese in Torbole sul Garda (Trento), Thursday to Saturday 4-8 PM and Sunday 3-9 PM, free admission, until October 25th.

The most daring is the 1996 Progear Dual Power: a mountain bike financed by Subaru, with a lever that allowed you to engage both wheels as drive wheels. The most affectionate (can one really say that?, but yes, absolutely) is the Colnago Master that Ernesto Colnago built for Eros Poli on the occasion of his attempt to break the hour record in 1986. The most astounding is the 2022 Animus: a gravel bike that Silvio Barbieri built with laminated wood and carbon sheets.

A 71-year-old from Rovereto in Trentino, nuclear engineer, commercial director in the field of fire-resistant closures (fire-rated doors), author of a book on bikes ("Spokes of Design", Ediciclo, 2024) and a second one coming soon (also with Ediciclo, it will be presented in preview on October 1st at the Trento sports festival), Carosini will present 50 of his 200 bicycles: "I have always considered them not as means of transport but as works of art, beautiful to look at and study, discover and investigate, admire and display. More than a bicycle collection, mine is an artistic project".

The closest is a bike created by Dario Pegoretti, who had his workshop in Verona: one of his last models, the "Catch the Spider", from 2017, a year before his death. But the most intimate, at zero kilometers, is the Columbus 100 made by Marco Anesi, Pegoretti's apprentice, right in Rovereto: from 2018, composed with a set of Columbus tubes, in limited edition (100), because they celebrated the centenary of the Milan-based company in Caleppio di Settala (1919-2019).

Carosini doesn't remember his first bike ("As a child, I had many"), he confesses his passion ("BMX, freestyle specialty, which I still practice occasionally and cautiously, on flat ground"), he tells of his emotions ("The first aspect I look at in a bike is its shape, the first value I judge is originality, the first question I ask myself is why it was made this way"), then he is overwhelmed by the history of each bike ("How I found it, discovered it, bought it, recovered it, restored it").

There is also the Volumetrica Team 3V that Faliero Masi built in 1988, with special Reynolds tubes, enlarged and ovalized, "in a thin steel, extremely difficult to work with, intended for the Soviet Union national team on the occasion of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, created in collaboration with the United States". "The bicycle – Carosini explains – can give emotion, amazement, revelation. And, like an angel, it has no gender".