EDITORIAL

W

hen you say New York Times you think of the who’s who of world journalism. The legendary American paper undoubtedly has global prestige and for those working in the sector it is surrounded by an almost sacred aura.

In December 2003 I was lucky enough to cross its threshold (then at the old premises in Times Square) though I was only accompanying the writer Roberto Pazzi (in New York for a series of lectures on Frederick II and Puglia for our Bridge, which at that time came out in hard copy) to a meeting with the chief Foreign editor to arrange for the new articles he was going to send from Italy. Naturally I took two copies of our magazine with me, one for the colleague we were going to meet and one to leave for the executive editor, who in 2003 was Bill Keller. The editor promised to deliver the magazine to his boss and looked intently through his copy, expressing his appreciation and his curiosity about Puglia. “Curiosity” because to talk about Puglia in the United States was to talk about unknown places, since in 2003 it was a new frontier of tourism, not to mention when we made our first appearance at the Italian Institute of Culture, way back in 1996.

The scenario today is quite different. On April 15 this year The New York Times yet again devoted a long article to Lecce and its wonders, written by Jim Yardley. I received it by email from friends in New York who keep me informed in “real time” of all the news that appears in America about Puglia. The subject in this case was Lecce’s as yet almost unknown gem, the Faggiano Museum, which was created by sheer chance. The owner of the place (which is in via Ascanio Grandi, in the Old Town), Luciano Faggiano, wanted to open a trattoria and needed to connect the building to the sewage system in order to create a toilet. That’s all. But during the excavations a real treasure trove emerged: relics dating back to the Middle Ages along with a Messapian tomb, a room from Roman times and a Franciscan chapel… From the remote past emerged a precious little universe which is now a museum. Yardley told this story with touch of humor and that mixture of admiration and amazement that Americans always have when they talk about countries with so much history behind them.

Many other Apulian localities, due to their beauty and their uniqueness, have ended up in the pages of this and other prestigious American papers. A few days ago some dear friends in New Mexico drew my attention to a long, interesting article in the April 27 issue of the New Yorker (…another name that inspires awe, at least amongst the world’s intellectuals), “A cave with a view”, written by D. T. Max, about Matera. Naturally the article also refers to the recent title of “European Capital of Culture” for 2019, warning however of the dangers of mass tourism. In any case, the whole of Puglia along with Matera and Basilicata are in the press spotlight all over the world. When a few years ago a New York Times journalist was intrigued by the pictures of Puglia, we felt like pioneers promoting an area that since then has come a very long way. This is thanks to a range of factors, above all the cinema of Winspeare and other directors who have chosen Puglia as their film-set, thus establishing it in the collective imagination, but also thanks to the local music, to the re-launching of our countryside, dotted with splendid masserie previously abandoned but now resurrected to a new life. It is thanks to the new success of traditional cooking which is tied to the soil and the seasons (an absolute must in Puglia), to the wines and to so much more, but it is also due to the contribution of our Bridge Puglia USA, which since 1996 has been promoting Puglia, especially in the US.

In the long crisis that Italy, and especially the South, is going through, our aim should be to invest all our energies in sustainable development, also by seizing this one-in-a-million “magic moment” of interest by the world press in our territory.