Etinerando and Politecnico di Bari in the first 15 semi-finalists world teams of Google Challenge 2009!

Google Online Marketing Challenge 2009 is over. In this last edition 2187 teams from all over the world challenged in Advertising campaigns using Google Adwords. Etinerando is proud to announce that the team of Politecnico di Bari gained an outstanding result placing itself at the 8^th position among the first 15 world finalists, and at among the first 5 finalists in Europe!

Etinerando is really satisfied of this excellent result which shows the remarkable potentialities of our web portal, whose first aim is  to use new technologies at best to promote the region in a new way and to compete on the global web market.

Politecnico of Bari literally defeated national and international concurrence and let Italy be high ranked with honour in the rating list of the contest, to which many world Academies took part. Achievement of an advertising campaign with Google Adwords is linked to secret Google algorithms, followed by a rigorous judging process of experts.

Etinerando is moreover satisfied: the web portal has been created in southern Italy to promote southern Italy. The excellent result got by Politecnico of Bari and its young undergraduates, proves that in the south there are all requirements needed to excel in those fields, which are wrongly considered prerogatives of others national and international geographic areas.

Etinerando thanks Accaref, the team of Bari, composed by Cesare Lasorella, Emanuele Martucci, Giuseppe Mastrandrea, Manlio Felice Bacco, coordinated by Azzurra Ragone (engineer) and assisted by  Roberto Mirizzi (engineer). Soon They will be introduced on this blog.

A place apart – Puglia and Gargano peninsula

The Gargano Peninsula, with its steep forested hills and beautiful coastline, it is irresistible for Italian and other European holiday makers who relish its gorgeous weather and its unhurried, unspoilt way of life.

Arriving from the north, the first place to experience the area’s delights is in the small town of Rodi Garganico. As you wind your way down the hillside on the number 89 road, passing numerous olive and carob trees, you get your first close look at the Adriatic’s clear, turquoise waters and beautiful beaches of white sand and the

harbourside where boats leave for the nearby Tremeti Islands, and there are several good restaurants specialising in seafood.

Travelling eastwards from Rodi, you come across Peschici, a popular holiday destination, with an old Greek centre.

From near Peschici you can take a short drive to Vico del Gargano, a fascinating place where the centro storico area has large fortified walls and towers into which houses have been gradually incorporated over the centuries.

Here, you have the feeling that nothing much has changed during the last hundred years or more as you sample traditional rustic scenes: herbs and tomatoes drying in the sun, and working mules

tethered up outside homes or even kept in next-door houses that have evolved into en-suite barns.

You can enjoy a picnic during spring and summer time, in the huge Foresta Umbra, under the shade of oaks and beeches, accompanied by distant sound of cowbells.

Holiday capital

Further east along the coastline, you notice numerous defensive towers like the Torre di San Sfinale – east of Peschici – and many coastal arches as the arch of San Felice – south of Scialmarino beach.

A little further along, you come to Vieste, an attractive town that has become the holiday capital of the Gargano and which has an extensive market on Monday mornings.

Drop down to the coast to the large Pizzomunno beach which begins with an enormous pinnacle jutting out of the sea with the town perched above the white cliffs. This stretches off southwards with places to eat and camp opposite the beach.

At the end of this coastline tour, there is the pleasant town of Mattinata, full of hotels and places to eat.

From here, many go further inland to visit Monte Sant’Angelo. Situated in a very elevated position, this town is built upon the cult of Archangel Michael who is supposed to have appeared inside a grotto.

The Santuario di San Michele was built on this spot, and the site of this miracle became a centre of pilgrimage and devotion, originally for pilgrims and Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land but today swarming with visitors from far afield.

Birthplace of Padre Pio

The Sanctuary of San Michele is approached through a large, elaborate Gothic portico.

Passing through the massive bronze doors from Constantinople, you nearly always have to jostle with crowds to see the interior, hewn out of solid rock and containing an 11th-century bishops’ throne and other precious works of art. Next door stands an unusual 13th-century octagonal bell tower, and below this, steps lead down to the Tomba di Rotari, believed to be the tomb of an early Lombard ruler.

Still further inland, you come to San Giovanni Rotondo, the birthplace of the miracle-working Padre Pio, whose likeness is seen everywhere in the town. The place is mainly associated with the Santa Maria delle Grazie church and convent and, at present, a huge modern church is under construction behind it. The approach to the present church has markers at regular intervals to guide pilgrims approaching on foot.

Most, however, arrive by coach or car and see only the car park ringed with kiosks selling gaudy souvenirs. Those not sharing the faith of its many visitors might find it overly commercialised. A large hospital, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, was the inspiration of Padre Pio – now San Pio – and overlooks the whole scene.

Further along the same road, the pilgrimage route continues to San Marco in Lamis with its San Matteo convent. Every Good Friday the fracchie procession is held as torches of burning sticks are pulled through the streets

By John Heseltine – Extract from Italy.com

The Italian Trullo Challenge

 

The Italian village of Alberobello is home to i trulli, its unique whitewashed stone houses. But how much do you know about them?

Test your knowledge and pick up some interesting facts in the BBC fun quiz.

Start the quiz.

 

 

THE RUSSIAN DECEMBER FESTIVAL IN BARI

 

 

From 5^th to 21^st   December 2008, Bari is proud to play host to the festival “The Winter Garden of arts”.

The festival boast world- famous Russian concert artists, up-and-coming young directors, an exhibition of sacred icons with amber and an exhibition of photographs by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the main architect of the imperial court, who is the creator of the most extraordinary residences of tsars.

The most important events not to miss:

On Friday, 5^th December 2008, at 10 am: Inauguration of Photo and Amber Luxur Goods Exhibition “An Italian Russian: Francesco bartlomeo Rastrelli and Tsarskoe Selo“- the exhibition will remain open till 21^st December, in Portico dei Pellegrini  (the façade of the Basilica of San Nicola, the old town)

On Saturday, 13^th December 2008, at 8 pm: Concert of the Russian accordionist Oleg Vereshchagin “Bayan, the voice of soul”, in the Basilica of San Nicola

On Wednesday, 17^th December 2008, at 7.30 pm: the concert of the string quartet “Capriccio“, at the Intercultural Centre Abusuan (in the old town of Bari); at 8.30 pm: the projection of the film and meeting with the director of the film “Nothing Personal”- Larisa Salidova , at the Intercultural Centre Abusuan (in the old town of Bari)

On Thursday, 18^th December 2008, at 8.30 pm: the projection of the film and meeting with the director of the film “Mermaid”- Anna Melikian, at the Intercultural Centre Abusuan (in the old town of Bari)

On Friday, 19^th December 2008, at 8.30 pm: the projection of the film and meeting with the director of the film “FM St Petersburgh”- O. Bychkova, at the Intercultural Centre Abusuan (in the old town of Bari)

On Saturday, 20^th December 2008, at 7.30 pm: the concert of the string quartet “Capriccio“, in the concert hall Valliva (in the old town of Bari); at 8.30 pm: the projection of the film and meeting with the director of the film “One more”- O. Bychkova , in the concert hall Valliva (in the old town of Bari)

On Sunday, 21^st December 2008, at 8.30 pm: the projection of the film and meeting with the director of the film “The golden century”- Khotinenko, at the Intercultural Centre Abusuan (in the old town of Bari)

  

NOTTE BIANCA IN PUGLIA

 

 

 

Puglia becomes the greatest open-air stage in the world.

From December 5 to 7, “Puglia Night Parade” will stage more than 80 shows, the best street artists, dance, theatre, music and concerts in an appealing combination of tourism, culture, and entertainment.

From the colossal stars of the new Cirque du Soleil and Les Farfadais, to the street theatres of the Transe Express, to the theatrical companies Els Comediants and La Fura dels Baus, the excellence of world-famous artists will transform Puglia into an international showcase. The cities of Bari, Brindisi, Foggia, Lecce, Taranto, Barletta, Andria, and the two UNESCO sites of Alberobello and Castel del Monte will host a full line of top-level artistic and cultural performances. In addition to the spectacular parades that will overwhelm the urban panorama, even city streets, squares, churches, castles, and historical buildings will be featuring events, shows, readings, theatrical and musical productions. Just some of the events on the calendar include concerts by Franco Battiato, Roy Paci, Boban Markovic e Frank London, Arbore and the Orchestra Italiana and Mario Rejes & Gipsy All Stars, Piero Pelù, Ambrogio Sparagna, Lucio Dalla, Madredeus, Eugenio Bennato, Antonello Venditti, Pino Daniele, a recital by Giancarlo Giannini and Patrizia Valduga, performances by poets, writers, and witnesses of Puglia throughout the world.

 

THE PERTRUZZELLI THEATRE IN BARI IS ABOUT TO RETURN TO LIFE

 

 

Etinerando is pleased to present the news appeared on 17^th October in Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, which is entirely dedicated to the reconstruction and the imminent reopening of the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari.

It is only the beginning of Etinerando’s homage paid to one of the most important theatres in the world, which was destroyed about 17 years ago. We will try to tell the story of the famous Apulian theatre till the day of  a long expected event on 6^th December 2008. We will go over the most significant moments of its activity and remember when it ceased, during one the saddest nights of its total fire destruction.

Day by day, the Petruzzelli Theatre is being freed from the scaffolding which has been shrouding it for many years and the superior façade with its white sculptures, which rises above the theatre’s fastigium, has been uncovered and  made visible today. The carved shapes represent Apollo putting a crown on the head of Musica. There are Griffins sitting on the extreme edges of the façade. They have already become a symbol of the theatre, because this  is the part of the building, which endured the flames devouring the rest of the building..

A few days before the 17th anniversary of the fire accident which, during the night of  27^th October 1991 turned the theatre into a hollow crater, and less than one month from its re-opening day, the Petruzzelli Theatre is regaining in small doses its former appearance and showing again the features inhabitants of Bari remember very well: brick red walls outside and white stucco walls decorated by golden ornaments inside. What we can see now is the theatre of the past, the stuccos and ornaments are exactly the same as they were designed originally and they resemble the very few theatre remnants which withstood the fire.

The final effect of the reconstruction is a new building envelope, which respects tradition of the theatre inaugurated in 1903 but has got a modern heart. Technological systems, such as a fire prevention system, will control everything happening inside and outside the building.

After passing the foyer, which was the first part to be reconstructed and restored, and which has been used for meetings and exhibitions for a long time, you enter into the stalls, which was a hole surrounded by the skeletons of tiers of boxes just till a few months ago. A parquet floor has been already laid down, interior decorations on the walls and on the tiers of boxes, up to the gallery, are completed, brass and crystal pendants have already been mounted. Inside the theatre boxes, the walls are covered with fabrics produced in Venice by Rubelli. These hand-made embroidered fabrics reproduce embellishments on a red background, similar to those  discovered after the fire under the burnt wallpaper. In the next few days, elbow rest cushions and velvet valances will be installed and about 420 red velvet seats made by Frau will be positioned in the back stalls.

Special attention will be paid to the acoustics. Iroko parquet of  the stalls is suspended: it will act as a sounding board and it will allow the ventilation and fireproof system to pass under every seat. The zinc roof of the dome was  made of lamellar wood and it was covered with a special sound absorbing plaster. The original frescoes of the painter Armenise will not be reproduced, just to avoid decreasing the effect of the sound absorbing material.

All in all, the Petruzzelli Theatre will offer 1482 seats and 8 seats  for the disabled. The orchestra pit has got another 40 seats and it can be lifted up to the same level of the stalls according to need. Behind the safety curtain, which is about to be mounted, the world of artists reveals its secrets: 12 dressing rooms with mirrors being  fixed, 2 large dressing rooms for walk-on parts and extras, and a tailor workshop. The construction yard is still a mess but it is entering its final phase: it will be Zubin Mehta to inaugurate the Petruzzelli Theatre on the  6^th December.

 

 

Finding Italy’s Soul in Puglia

Loafing around in a stark and chiseled landscape where life still moves slowly.

 

 

Puglia is happening. Almost. And therein lies its charm. “Almost” means it is not yet overrun. Life goes on here, at the heel of the boot of Italy, as it always has—an idyllic snapshot of bella Italia, where the older generation of men still sit on park benches, like cats finding a spot of sun, play boccie and then gather in cafés at dusk. People here have time. Shops and churches close at 12:30 P.M. and don’t reopen until 4:30 or 5:00 P.M. Although it’s just an hour’s flight south from Rome to Puglia’s capital, Bari (which is perhaps why fashionable Romans are buying property there like mad), or about four hours’ drive across the country from Naples, Puglia feels a world apart. Only recently has it taken a place in the travelers’ pantheon of discoveries.

Unlike green and sensuous Tuscany, Puglia’s landscape is stark and chiseled. It is agricultural, with vineyards, fields of grain and secolari, those magnificent hundred-year-old olive trees, planted in perfectly straight, long lines across the terrain. Puglia’s other distinctive landmarks are the trulli—conical, drystone buildings used for both living space and storage—which lend a fairy-tale quality to the countryside, and the sandy beaches and grottoes, which shape the coastlines.

For ten years, friends of mine had been telling me about the 200-mile-long peninsula that skims the Adriatic on the east side, where Greece is practically within earshot, and the Gulf of Taranto on the west. They extolled the beauty of the fortified architecture, which reflects the various invaders, from Greeks to Normans. They raved about the hearty cuisine, the wide choice of hotels and, above all, Puglia’s enduring authenticity. Finally tempted to see this intriguing land for ourselves, my partner and I devoted several weeks one recent autumn (summer is too hot) to unearthing Puglia’s secrets. Dividing our time into a “home stay” and a road trip, we rented a house near Cisternino, a small town in the center of coastal Puglia that was ideal for day excursions, and plotted our drive to Il Salento, the southernmost region.

Our house was a restored trullo set among olive groves, less than an hour from either Bari or Brindisi, two of Puglia’s airport gateways, and the town of Cisternino itself was typical of many in Puglia, with a centro storico (historic district) that, alas, was encircled by unattractive new buildings. As temporary residents, we established simple habits that helped integrate us into local life, such as having our evening aperitivo or a casual dinner at a butcher shop with an adjacent grill, which may have been my favorite meal of the trip. Not knowing the gastronomic ground rules, and having just eaten a simple green salad, I asked for vegetables as a side dish to my main course. The waiter responded with: “Vegetables? Vegetables, signorina? We don’t have a kitchen—we only roast meat.”

During our ten-day stay, we wanted to explore the handful of hamlets surrounding Cisternino. We tried to plan around market days, when vendors selling everything from olives and roast chickens to underwear and frying pans would set up temporary shop in one part of town—be it a particular street or a square. Of the villages we visited, the most beautifully proportioned was Martina Franca, studded with Baroque and Rococo architecture. We stopped at the Basilica di San Martino and saw the frescoed rooms at the 17th-century Palazzo Ducale, a visit we capped off with spaghetti and wild mushrooms at Ristorante. Two miles away as the crow flies, Locorotondo’s centro storico charmed me with its tiny lanes of whitewashed buildings and the fragrance of simmering tomato sauce wafting out over balconies hung with laundry. A wine merchant introduced me to Locorotondo’s whites made from the Verdeca and Bianco d’Alessano grapes.

We made the requisite pilgrimage fifteen minutes away to Alberobello, the UNESCO World Heritage site famous for its dense concentration of trulli. The old quarter was, indeed, one trullo after another, though most were souvenir and craft shops. In the center of Alberobello we ventured into the tiny restaurant. It was a typically Italian pleasure to overindulge in the variety of focaccia and tagliarini al pomodoro.

By the end of the first week, lured by tales of two spectacular places, we headed north about an hour to the Adriatic coastal town of Trani. Along the way (and throughout Puglia in general), it appeared that every town had a church or a cathedral worth pulling over to see. But Trani was unusual in that its cathedral was simple yet spectacular, set on a tiny peninsula jutting into the sea. We drove inland another forty-five minutes, since we were already halfway there, to see one of the region’s great wonders, near the towns of Andria and Ruvo di Puglia: Castel del Monte. Built in the 13th century by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, king of Germany and king of Sicily, Castel del Monte is considered one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval buildings. From afar, it rises like a monolith on a hilltop above the fields, and its unusual architectural plan includes eight octagonal towers. Whatever the explanation for using the number eight, and there are many—it’s a symbol of the crown, an astrological configuration or even a coming together of God and man—the vast, empty interiors instilled a powerful sense of quiet.

Sorry to leave our routine in Cisternino but eager for new vistas, we officially began our road trip in Savelletri di Fasano, on the Adriatic coast, spending a few nights in two hotels with traditional architecture but modern amenities.

We then headed south about an hour to the Baroque village of Lecce, which could be described as a mini Rome. Its main square, Piazza Sant’Oronzo, even has the well-tended remains of a Roman amphitheater, and much like that larger city, Lecce is made for walking. For lunch, we strolled to a restaurant for a sample of the local dish ciceri e tria (half-fried, half-boiled chickpeas and pasta) and couldn’t resist the more familiar pasta, oven baked with mozzarella, eggplant and basil. In the evening we watched as Lecce lit up with extravagantly illuminated churches and squares. Stores stayed open late, and people cruised the pulsing Via Vittorio Emanuele II well into the night or sat, deep in conversation, at bars and restaurants.

Thirty minutes farther south, we checked into a Masseria- a comfortable Moorish-style hotel, and had lunch, in nearby Giurdignano, where a seventy-five-year-old woman hand-made our orecchiette, Puglia’s signature pasta that looks like little ears (hence the name). My favorite “larger” town was farther south still: Galatina, a wine-producing center since the Middle Ages. Its 14th-century Basilica di Santa Caterina di Alessandria, whose centerpiece is the religious narrative depicted on the frescoed ceiling, is a rare example of Gothic architecture.

Nearing the tip of the heel, with just two days left on our journey, we overnighted in Marittima di Diso.

On our last day, we followed the coast to Marina de Leuca, the end of the peninsula, and on to Acquarica del Capo, a town famous for hand-woven rush-and-reed baskets. They aren’t for sale commercially, but the owner of a hardware store where I happened to inquire said that his aunt still made them. He got into his car, and we followed him to her house. Bent over with age and effort, she welcomed us into her garage and proudly brought out her remaining three straw-colored, basket-weave tote bags. I bought all three.

Published on 10/11/2007- Extract from the Town and Country Travel Magazine

 

 

 

LA NOTTE DELLA TARANTA TENTH EDITION

 

 

 

 

 

  

Puglia: the complete guide

Well-shod travellers are heading for Italy’s rustic ‘heel’. Read on and you’ll be hot-footing it too

 

When cool, couture-clad Milanese began quietly descending upon Puglia a few years ago, it was clear that something was afoot.

For centuries, Northern Italians have had strong reservations about the country’s deep south – a wild, sun-scorched region of twisted groves, limestone plateaus and ragged coasts.

In fact, Italy has always rested firmly on its ‘heel’ (as Puglia is often called), which supplies nearly all of the nation’s olive oil and pasta; but it took the opening of some supremely stylish hotels to convince the rest of the country there was more to the place than

As masserias (fortified farmhouses) began to re-emerge as boutique retreats, snobbery evaporated and Italians flocked south for chic weekends in the sun.

What they found was a natural showstopper: a 400km-long spur of land jutting into the cobalt Adriatic – and with history too. Waves of invaders have washed up in Puglia, each adding something wonderful: there are Greek-style white villages, gaudy Baroque confections built by the Spanish, and even the odd Roman ruin, framed by olive groves and glittering seas.

Add to this a flourishing foodie scene lauded by Italian culinary king Antonio Carluccio, and easy-hop Ryanair flights from the UK, and you’d think the place would be chocker. But for now, it remains appealingly Brit-free.

So do as the Italians do: combine the simple pleasures of pottering with some indulgent treats. Just don’t try and cram too much in, or you’ll spend all your time on the road (leave the lovely city of Lecce for another trip). You’ll find that there’s nothing down-at-heel about this southern sensation.

SIMPLE PLEASURES

* Those strange ‘stone igloos’ strewn across Puglia’s sun-baked plains are trulli: circular, whitewashed houses with conical slate roofs, they’re unique to the area. Dating from around the 15th century, they’re thought to have been an ancient fiddle: constructed without cement, they could be easily dismantled before the tax-man came to town (thus evading housing duties) and rebuilt once the coast was clear.

Admire them in Unesco-listed Alberobello, home to 1,500 or more examples, many still inhabited. In high summer, you’ll need to turn up early to avoid the throngs. Stop off at Trullo Sovrano for a tour of the only authentic two-storey trullo in existence (Piazza Sacramento; 00 39 080 432 6030).

* Wear sunglasses when you visit dazzling Ostuni (known locally as ‘la Città Bianca’, or ‘White City’). Wrapped in thick ramparts, its shadowy alleys thread upwards to a grand 15th-century Gothic cathedral: absorb its delicate pink-gold stone exteriors from one of the pavement cafes that spill down the sloping streets below. Then weave your way downwards to the obelisked Piazza della Libertà. Awash with bars and cafes, during summer it buzzes late into the hot night.

* Locorotondo rises like a wedding cake from a silvery sea of olive and almond groves. The town’s name (‘round place’) is a clue to its circular layout: whitewashed tiers spiralling high above the pancake-flat plains. Stop here at dusk, when trulli in the fields below glow bubblegum pink in the evening sun.

* The pocket-sized port of Polignano a Mare doesn’t see many visitors, but is well worth a pitstop. Built into the cliffs, medieval houses crowd like sugar cubes high above the Adriatic. On Sundays, the locals promenade in the old town’s tangle of canyon-walled streets, before an afternoon aperitif .

* Martina Franca is a graceful 14th-century town rich in elaborate examples of Baroque architecture – see the ornate facade of Basilica di San Martino. In July and August, streets swell with opera-lovers for the annual Festival della Valle d’Itria (www.festivaldellavalleditria.it), one of Italy’s finest performing arts events.  

* The ruined city of Egnazia (00 39 080 482 9056), near Fasano, flourished in 5BC; its walls, forum, Roman amphitheatre and temples are photogenically weathered, and the setting is splendid, framed by olive groves and wildflowers, with the sea glittering beyond. The on-site museum houses some well-preserved mosaics and earthenware: well worth a wander.

GUILTY PLEASURES

* Carnivores – get your chops around the town of Cisternino at lunchtime, when it’s hazy with smoke from meat sizzling on the grill. Here there’s a tradition of fornello pronto: you choose your meat and have it cooked on the spot.

* Puglia has some impressive spas, for example a subterranean grotto has been cut from bare rock, with a sinuous pool and treatment rooms tucked down tiny passageways or an underground spa over two floors, with a Moroccan-style marble hammam.

* It may be famous for its olive oil, but Puglia also produces excellent wines, including some of the country’s finest rosés.  Locorotondo is known for its wonderful whites – the sparkling Locorotondo Brut is crisp. Prefer a rich red? In Martina Franca cellars are stacked with award-winning vino rosso. Tastings are free.

MACABRE CHRISTMAS: The Basilica di San Nicola in Bari is home to the bones of St Nicolas, aka Santa Claus. They are said to leak a holy liquid on hot days.

GET STUFFED: Puglia supplies 80 per cent of Europe’s pasta, 80 per cent of Italy’s olive oil and makes more wine than Australia.

CARB CRAZY: Apulians consume at least twice as much pasta and bread per head as Americans.  

PARTY TIME: There’s always a festival going on – pick up a copy of Qui Salento (a weekly local mag) to find out what’s on during your stay.

HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Mel Gibson filmed scenes from The Passion of Christ in Puglia.

ad in the water as it’s said to have health benefits. It’s a kind of free thalassotherapy, I guess!

TRAVEL BRIEF

GETTING THERE

Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Bari from £52, and to Brindisi from £20. British Airways (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com) flies from Gatwick to Bari, from £115.

GETTING AROUND

Europcar (0870 607 5000, www.europcar.co.uk) has four days’ car hire from Brindisi airport from £130. Or try Holiday Autos (0870 400 4461, www.holidayautos.com).

GOING PACKAGED

Citalia (0871 200 2004, www.citalia.com) has five nights’ B&B at the Masseria Torre Maizza from £779pp, including flights from Gatwick to Bari. Or try Long Travel (01694 722367, www.long-travel.co.uk) or Thomson (0871 231 4691, www.thomson.co.uk).

By  Josephine Davies – Exctrac from The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

July 15, 2008

Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep in Puglia

 

 

 

 

Italian town hopes Padre Pio’s body brings legion

 

of faithful – and their wallets

 

 

 

The body of Padre Pio went on display in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. A likeness of his face is made of wax. (Marco di Lauro for The New York Times)

 

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Italy: The only visible parts of Padre Pio are his fingers, blackened now 40 years after he died.

The palms, which once provoked sharp debates over how they came to be marked with the same wounds as Christ’s, are covered by his famous half gloves (replicas of which can be bought here for $8, or, for $4.75, a Padre Pio snow globe).

The face is made of wax, a convincing likeness, gray beard and all.

“It left me breathless,” said Rosa Michitelli, 60, a nurse who as a girl attended Mass celebrated by Pio, then a Capuchin monk suspected of fraud and self-promotion by the Vatican but since his canonization in 2002, Italy’s most revered saint. “It was just like when he was alive.”

Michitelli spoke just after seeing Pio’s body, which was put on display here on Thursday. She was one of the first.

Some 750,000 people have made reservations to see him between now and December – a testament to his enduring popularity, a thirst for something immediately spiritual that the Roman Catholic Church often does not provide and, it cannot be ignored, the need to expand tourism in a town that while attracting eight million visitors a year has too many hotels and not enough tourists who actually stay the night.

“This is an opportunity we have to turn religious tourism into mass tourism,” said Massimiliano Ostillio, who is in charge of tourism for the region of Puglia, which makes up the heel on Italy’s boot.

Occupancy rates for the 125 or so hotels in this town where Pio lived for more than 50 years are the lowest in Italy, Ostillio said.

He said he hoped that the large number of people expected to come to see Pio might stay longer, then explore the rest of Puglia (not to mention possibly buy more Padre Pio thimbles, statues, key chains, rosaries, alarm clocks, plates and candles), just as visitors to the shrine of St. Francis in Assisi spill over into the surrounding region of Umbria.

Holy places are always like this, a mix of money and real devotion, more so in recent years in Europe as an aging population flocks to shrines like Lourdes in France and Medjugorje in Bosnia in ever larger numbers. They represent, many experts say, a sort of concrete spirituality – a sickness to be cured, a favor granted – all unbound by the institution of the church.

The church, said Antonio Socci, an Italian expert on Pio, “is the world of the human, for good or for bad.”

“But in the case of saints, it is the tangible presence of God,” he added.

And so the church has often looked with suspicion on modern miracles and their workers, perhaps most so in the case of Pio, born Francesco Forgione in 1887 in the small southern village of Pietrelcina. Around 1911, as a young and exceptionally devout priest, he wrote that he began to experience something disturbing.

“Last night, something happened which I can neither explain nor understand,” he wrote to a friend. “In the middle of the palms of my hands a red mark appeared, about the size of a penny, accompanied by acute pain in the middle of the red marks.”

The wound spread to his feet and his side. Soon his stigmata became famous, attracting huge numbers of pilgrims and enough money that he eventually built a hospital that was once the biggest in southern Italy. Popes had various opinions of him, however, the harshest being John XXIII, who, a recent book contends, considered him a fraud and a womanizer. In 1960, the pope wrote of Pio’s “immense deception.”

A Vatican doctor called him “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people’s credulity.” Many suspected that his wounds were caused by carbolic acid, which, one recently unearthed document contends, he once ordered from a pharmacist.

But Pope John Paul II, who had confessed to him in the 1940s and who canonized more saints than any other pope, had a different view.

He canonized Pio, who died in 1968 at age 81, before what had been reported as one of the biggest crowds that had ever traveled to Rome.

Pio, now officially St. Pio of Pietrelcina, has since been effectively normalized by the Vatican, and the crowd here seemed to have no doubt about the legitimacy of his wounds. (He has been credited with other powers, like levitation and bi-location, the ability to be in two places at one time.)

“He was suffering,” Concetta Crescenzi, 65, who visited Pio with a German friend in 1966, said during a Mass on Thursday that marked the opening of the crypt with Pio’s body in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. “He had blood coming out of his hands. If you saw it, you would believe it.”

With that, Brunella Pardini, 69, stood up from a chair nearby.

“This is a demonstration of its truth!” she proclaimed, surveying the crowd that had come for the Mass. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing!”

 

By Ian Fisher  - HERALD TRIBUNE

Daniele Pinto contributed reporting.

 

Published: April 25, 2008

 

 

Apulia: rustic fabulousness in Italy’s heel 

 

 

 

We were bound for a farmhouse, and I had my doubts. Like many seasoned travelers, I had been burned by the promise of rustic lodging with multi-star amenities, a happy-sounding combination that often meant a working telephone in a stone chamber otherwise untouched by progress and its attendant conveniences, like reliable plumbing and regular maid service.

And the lodging in question was in the southern Italian region of Apulia, which I had known to be an inconvenient place. I had made work trips there in 2002 and 2003, when I was a reporter based in Rome, and had marveled at the cramped, drab airport in the region’s largest city, Bari. It was fit for a Graham Greene novel, not a glossy travel brochure.

So when my friend Sylvie told me that old farmhouses less than an hour’s drive south of Bari were being converted into cushy resorts, I felt more skepticism than curiosity. And when she gushed about the reputed beauteousness of the one she had booked us into, I vowed to be charmed, not outraged, at the inevitable exposure of her gullibility. The vacation would go so much easier that way.

Early one afternoon last September, we pulled up to our agrarian idyll, and I searched in vain for any traces of a farmhouse in the airbrushed campus of smooth whitewashed buildings before us. The buildings were fringed by palm trees and latticed by tidy gravel paths. Off to their side glittered a huge, pristine swimming pool with a slatted wood deck. Beyond that, on the grounds of a sister “farmhouse,” the candlelit rooms of a full-service spa meandered through an underground cave of sorts. This was pure luxury. It was also a barometer of what was happening in Apulia.

The Bari airport that I flew into this time around was new and much bigger than the old one, reflecting the heavy traffic of budget carriers and sun worshipers from England and Germany. Almost everywhere we went, we encountered a region with a tourist infrastructure much better developed, especially at the high end, than it had been, say, five years earlier. Apulia was entering that instantly recognizable (and somewhat oxymoronic) Mediterranean state of rustic fabulousness.

It is no wonder that, in conversation and print, Apulia is so frequently called the new or next Tuscany, a tired, trite sobriquet that will no doubt be trotted out for obscure Basilicata and hapless Molise – two of the country’s poorest, least visited regions – if we just wait long enough.

But you will find no Florence in Apulia. No Siena, either, though the city of Lecce, with its impressive Baroque churches, is an architectural showcase less seen than it deserves to be.

What you will find, in place of big revelations, is an accretion of the small, quiet moments that can be so rare in more trammeled patches of Italy, which is to say most of the country.

In sleepy Trani, which is like Portofino on Quaaludes, you will stumble across the Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Pilgrim, a tawny, asymmetric Romanesque church completed in 1143 and set against an unusually vivid backdrop: the turquoise waters of the southern Adriatic. You will peek inside the church and, unless it is the height of tourist season, notice something extraordinary. You’ve got the place to yourself.

In Lecce, you will ring the bell at Cucina Casareccia, where everyone has told you to have dinner, but you will wonder if you have the right address, because there is no clear sign out front and the door is locked. An older woman opens it, checks to make sure you have a reservation and leads you to one of no more than a dozen tables.

Perhaps 10 minutes later, she pulls up a chair so she can sit while she tells you, in Italian so patiently enunciated that almost anyone with a phrase book could follow along, what is being served that night. The marinated yellow peppers that kick off the meal are some of the sweetest you can ever hope to have. The veal meatballs that come later are some of the juiciest.

And on the paths to and from almost everywhere you go, you will see what rapidly emerges as the defining image of Apulia, a scene charming instead of dazzling, which is partly why it distills the region so well. A grove of aged olive trees, their branches and trunks as gnarled as nature gets, spreads out behind one of the squat stone fences that seem to be countless in number and endless in reach. A lot of brawn has gone into this countryside, where a disproportionate amount of Italy’s olives, grapes and grain is grown.

Apulia does not make sense as a primer for, or point of introduction to, a country whose most regal, accessible treasures and dramatic landscapes lie elsewhere. It is better considered and appreciated as a course in advanced Italian for the traveler who has already learned the grammar of Rome and Venice; conjugated the golden hills of Tuscany and the green ones of Umbria; been brought up to speed on all of the basics.

It is not only subtler but also more demanding. Unless you are a beach bum content to plant yourself on a small patch of sand along Apulia’s western or eastern coastline – as the spiky-tipped heel of the Italian boot, Apulia has shores facing each direction – you need to stay on the move.

There is no one city that can keep you fully engaged for more than a few days or makes an ideal base from which to take short, easy day trips. Bari is too far to the north, Lecce is too far to the south, and Brindisi, which falls between them, is simply too depressing.

Over the course of a week in Apulia, Sylvie and I drove and drove, seldom sure exactly where to stop, because Apulia does not make it obvious.

We knew we had to visit Alberobello, designated a Unesco World Heritage site in recognition of its dense cluster of trulli, the eccentric conical structures that dot the countryside south of Bari. They date from at least the Middle Ages and may be even older, and they look like sun-baked timeshares for elves. Alberobello has scores of them, along with the smarts to milk them for all they are worth.

Signs around town direct you to the conjoined “Siamese trulli.” To the “smallest trullo in the world,” trullo being the singular form of the word. To the “sovereign trullo,” larger than others and situated on a bluff above them. More than a few of these trulli harbor souvenir shops, which of course sell miniature replicas of the very structures they inhabit. You will have your fill of trulli by the time you leave, which may be as soon as 90 minutes after you have arrived.

We felt pulled not only to Alberobello but also to the tip of the heel, and we wisely took a long day for a slow drive there and back from Lecce. While much of Apulia’s shoreline is flat, the eastern stretch between land’s end and Otranto, a span of about 25 miles, represents a jaggedly beautiful exception, and it puts you so close to Greece, which parts of Apulia resemble, that at one point the only station we could get on our car radio was a Greek one.

We traced the curves, rises and dips of the road nearest the water, and it took us through tiny seaside towns with crescent-shaped beaches that were largely empty. Granted, we were past the peak of summer, but the weather was still warm enough in late September for sunbathing and swimming. We did both just a few minutes north of Otranto, having ventured down a dirt road that dead-ended perhaps eight steps from the sea.

There were tall dunes all around us, and I clambered to the top of one, where I could not hear anything but surf and wind and could not see anyone else. I stood there for a good half-hour, unwilling to surrender this perch.

Like so much in Apulia, Lecce is quickly digested, but what a treat. Its compact historic center – where bicycles outnumber motor scooters or cars and fashionably dressed men and women walk tiny, puffy dogs – has the gentle, affluent feel of a northern Italian city like Parma or Ferrara.

It also has more than a half-dozen compelling Baroque churches, no two more than 10 minutes by foot apart, and they are not lost in a crush of other architectural gems, the way the Baroque churches in Rome can be. To look at the spiraled columns on their facades, where stone animals frolic and cherubs preen, is to understand how badly a generation of builders wanted to jettison the clean lines and restraint of the Renaissance. This is exuberant, exultant art.

What Lecce does not have is a plethora of decent accommodations. The development of these has been lavished on or near the beach areas to its south, where the emergence of high-end boutique hotels – one fashioned from a former convent, another from a former tobacco factory – was the subject of a cover story in an issue of a major Italian travel magazine that was published during our trip.

Even more high-end development has occurred to its north, on or near a stretch of coastline between Bari and Brindisi, which are most foreign tourists’ points of entry into Apulia. The coastal towns of Monopoli and Savelletri di Fasano lie at the center of this activity, and Monopoli presents a tidy, decidedly upscale emblem of it: La Peschiera, a five-star hotel that, despite its waterfront location, has seven discrete pools – some of them, admittedly, tiny ones – for just 11 rooms.

La Peschiera opened in 2002, the same year that Masseria Torre Coccaro in nearby Savelletri came along, reflecting Apulia’s masseria boom. The word masseria refers to a fortified farmhouse – fortified in the sense that its turrets and walls were built to spot and deter invaders – and there are many of these structures situated a ways back from the sea in Savelletri.

Over the past five years, one after another has been converted into a luxury accommodation with no more than a few dozen rooms, manicured grounds and, more likely than not, a spacious and eye-catching pool. The one at Torre Coccaro, which also has the underground spa, was built to resemble a Polynesian beach, replete with little thatch-roofed huts. Apulia’s eagerness to woo the international jet set sometimes gets ahead of its good taste.

Sylvie and I stayed next door, at Masseria Torre Maizza, which had opened four months earlier. Long before that, it was farmland, barns and storage areas. But old and new structures on the property had been integrated seamlessly into a tiny snow-white village with golf links around it and a library of scores of digital video discs. The plumbing and maid service were beyond reproach.

This masseria was our base for drives to Apulia’s version of hill towns, more pleasant than wildly picturesque and no competition for Todi or Assisi. Near the summit of one of them, Ostuni, we sought out a moody labyrinth of cobbled, white-walled passageways that we had read and heard about.

Twenty minutes later, we had walked down all of them. Twice.

A letdown? Not really, because in and around this maze we had a choice of several amusingly named restaurants. There was – to provide rough translations – the Restaurant of the Poor Man, the Restaurant of Jealousy and the Restaurant of Lost Time. We like the notion of squandering time. We went to that last one.

And for less than $60 apiece, including plenty of wine, we had a terrific four-course meal brimming with Apulia’s culinary trademarks. There was orecchiette, of course – those fat, ear-shaped nubs of pasta. There were chickpeas and broccoli rabe and cured meats seasoned with more pepper than in other parts of Italy and garnished with pomegranate seeds.

The food in Apulia is less instantly familiar than the food elsewhere in Italy. The wines – from such grapes as primitivo, negroamaro, verdeca and uva di troia – are not as well known to Americans as those made from sangiovese and nebbiolo grapes farther north.

And the restaurants and food stores exhibit a hospitality even more pronounced and easygoing than in other regions of Italy, because they have yet to be deluged with foreigners in the same way. At the restaurant Upepidde. in Ruvo di Puglia, the proprietor insisted on taking us into the back and showing us the cavernous stone rooms where he keeps thousands of bottles of wine.

And in Martina Franca, at a meat and salumi shop called Macelleria Romanelli Tommaso, the proprietor decided that Sylvie and I really could not taste the salumi properly without some wine, so he hustled away, fetched two plastic glasses, opened a local red blend and poured us tall glasses of it. As the wine went to my head, I could feel Apulia working its way into my heart.

 

By Frank Bruni – HERALD TRIBUNE – Published: May 4, 2007