PADDY AGNEWvisited the southern Italian city and found a destination to be savoured well after our World Cup qualifier is over – once fans aren't down about the result
PIAZZA DEL FERRARESE is the place. It takes little imagination to envisage thousands of hungry, thirsty Irish soccer fans having a good time in and around this central square in the heart of Bari Vecchia (Old Bari), just metres from the seafront, on the evening of Wednesday, April 1st, the day Ireland are due to meet Italy in a World Cup qualifier in the city.
On the mild February Saturday evening that we walked around Bari Vecchia it was obvious that la movida (the scene) was here. Imagine a rather larger Temple Bar, put it on a Mediterranean seafront, pave the streets with Puglia’s attractive, bright trani stone and you have the idea. The area around Piazza del Ferrarese is lined with bars, restaurants, pizza joints and assorted nightspots.
If you are of a quiet disposition, you might like to give it a miss on the night of the match, as it is sure to be a noisy melting pot of green and blue as the expected 6,000 Irish fans mix with 30,000 or so Italian fans, all of them due to be entertained by rock bands.
The curious thing about Bari Vecchia is that it seems to defy its nationwide reputation as a cross between the OK Corral and downtown Beirut. Let me explain. The day before I went to Bari I was covering a court case in central Rome. During the day, while making the usual idle chit-chat, I happened to mention to two lawyers, a court clerk and a Canadian journalist colleague that I was going down to Bari for the weekend. All four separately had almost identical reactions. “Be careful down there, Paddy,” “Hold on tight to your wallet,” and “Mind yourself down there,” came the responses.
Italians have long tended to look on Bari, capital of the Puglia region, on the very heel of the Italian boot, as yet another deep-south Dodge City, where car theft and handbag snatching come easy. Three acquaintances, one of them Italian, between them have been relieved of a new BMW, a handbag and the contents of a camper van in and around Bari.
To a large extent, though, that negative reputation is no longer justified. Bari Vecchia might once have been an uninviting ghetto, but it now looks like the in place.
The atmosphere is distinctly allegro, and the only sense of discomfort your correspondent felt was that created by the realisation that 95 per cent of those thronging the streets were 30-40 years younger than me. The Irish will enjoy this place.
And yet it is not only Bari’s reputation that could put you off the place. Just take a look at the road in from Palese Airport to the city. As with so many Italian cities, especially in the south, the outskirts of Bari are a monument not so much to poor town planning as to no town planning at all.
The landscape is dominated by a bewildering mix of ugly high-rise apartment blocks, abusivi (illegal) workshops, small factories, advertising hoardings and unkempt waste grounds, all of them occasionally interrupted by a few olive trees that look seriously out of place in a panorama of industrial semidecay. The road surface is not always great, while footpaths are not so much optional as nonexistent.
Since Roman times Bari has been an important place, a starting point for traders, crusaders, pilgrims and others heading across the Adriatic to Greece, the Middle East and beyond.
Even in these recessionary times Bari remains very busy, a market town for the whole region and one of the largest ferry and commercial ports on the Adriatic.
Driving on Saturday morning in Bari is no easy matter. Amid the buzz of the busy port, however, you can still see signs of a town that was once both elegant and very prosperous. Splendid turn-of-century art-deco buildings line an urban landscape that was originally carefully laid out in an imposing grid system.
If Piazza del Ferrarese will prove to be the number-one nightspot, you can rest assured that fans will enjoy two other areas in downtown Bari: firstly, there is Bari’s answer to Grafton Street, Via Sparano da Bari, a handsome kilometre-long pedestrianised shopping zone where the truant husband can buy the wife back home a Hermès handbag for anything up to €10,000. When the recalcitrant husband has atoned for his many sins, he might do well to visit the Vox bar, on the same street, to console himself over the amount of money he has spent.
Another area of Bari that will clearly be much visited – indeed, given the mild, sunny April weather the Irish can expect, this will be the most visited area of all – is the seafront. Bari has a handsome and well-maintained 19th-century promenade, complete with wrought-iron lamp posts, that on a sunny day offers a bedazzling vista of Adriatic blue.
If an enterprising traveller were to walk south along the promenade he or she would find one of the great Italian environmental success stories. About two kilometres out of town you come across a handsome little park set back from the seafront. This used to be the sight of Punta Perotti, an ugly 15-storey apartment block that sat right on the seafront.
Punta Perotti, for once, represents an Italian story with a happy end. In April 2006, at the end of a 10-year legal battle between the builders and Bari public prosecutors, the complex was dynamited out of existence.
The state prosecutors argued successfully that the building was abusivo because, among other things, it was less than 300m from the seafront. When it was finally and spectacularly blown up, the rubble was used to continue improvements to the seafront; the site of the building has been transformed into a pleasant public park.
One of the firms involved in the building of this horrendous complex was Sundondi SRL, part of the Matarrese group. This is a name worth paying attention to, for the Matarrese family is one of the most powerful in Puglia.
Michele Matarrese runs the building company and his brother Giuseppe is bishop of Frascati. Two other brothers, Vincenzo and Antonio, are big shots in Italian football. Vincenzo has been president of AS Bari football club (currently on top of Serie B) since 1983; Antonio Matarrese is president of the Italian football league.
Many believe it is thanks to Antonio Matarrese’s influence and political weight that Bari emerged as the final choice for the World Cup qualifier with Ireland. Remember that Antonio Matarrese, a one-time Christian Democrat MP and a candidate in the 2004 European elections, was president of the Italian Football Federation from 1987 to 1996, a period that, above all, included the Italia 90 World Cup. In short, the Matarrese boys are real shakers and makers.
For those who want to do more than shop, eat, drink, walk around the seafront and be merry, there are at least two possibilities. Firstly (see panel, right) there are some remarkable things to be seen in the area around Bari. Secondly, in the city itself there is the Basilica of San Nicola (St Nicholas is the patron saint of Bari) and the Cathedral of San Sabino, both more than 1,000 years old and both begun during the Byzantine era.
The diligent enthusiast should also take a look at Teatro Petruzzelli, the city’s splendid art-nouveau opera house. Unfortunately, looking is all you can do – and hereby hangs a tale. The Petruzzelli has been closed since it was almost entirely razed by a 1991 fire.
Even though renovation work has long since finished, the theatre remains closed largely because of a complex legal wrangle involving Bari town council and the Messeni-Nemagna family, owner of the theatre. Furthermore, as things stand, the theatre has not been given an all-clear in relation to fire regulations.
No one can say with any certainty when the Petruzzelli will reopen; what can be said is that its burning down represents a black page in recent Bari history.
In July 1993, two years after the fire, theatre manager Ferdinando Pinto was arrested on charges that he had organised an act of arson, using local Mafiosi for the purpose, with a view to using the insurance money to pay off a loan to the Mafia (called Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia).
In January 2006, however, after a 13-year odyssey through the courts, Pinto was finally acquitted. Two men, Giuseppe Mesto and Francesco Lepore, were convicted for having burned down the theatre, but the reason for their action remains a matter of conjecture.
What is for sure is that they have deprived Bari of a splendid theatre that in its heyday rivalled La Scala, in Milan. Unlike the Punta Perotti monster, the Petruzzelli has not, for the time being, arrived at a happy end.
Tales of petty theft, building speculation and burnt-out opera houses, not to mention organised crime, might make Bari sound pretty intimidating. In reality, the atmosphere in Bari is a lot less intimidating than in some parts of Dublin at night.
Then, too, perhaps the best thing about Bari are the Baresi – the people of Bari themselves. By and large they are very courteous, friendly and open. The Irish are going to get on famously here.
When we visited Bari we were shown around by Vito Tisci, president of the football federation’s Puglia regional committee. Your correspondent had phoned him a couple of days previously to ask if he would be available for an interview. I presumed Tisci would set aside half an hour for me. Little did I understand that he saw it as his role personally to show me around for the weekend if I so desired. Pugliese hospitality is a serious business.
Walking around Bari with Tisci can be a slow business, given that he tends to get stopped every 100m by yet another acquaintance, nearly all of whom seem to have some urgent matter that needs his attention. Given that I was in Bari for a reconnoitre prior to the football match, Tisci correctly enough took me off first thing to inspect the San Nicola stadium where Ireland will play Italy.
And here there was good and bad news. The good news is that this is a handsome stadium, not far from town, built for the 1990 World Cup by Renzo Piano, one of the architects who designed the Pompidou Centre, in Paris. The complex works off a striking nautical motif that makes huge sails out of the grandstands.
The bad news, at least for die-hard soccer fans, is that this is yet another ground ruined by being surrounded by a running track. The Irish fans will be placed in a good viewing area, but this is one of those stadiums where, if you are behind the goal, you may be 80m or more from the action. The absurdity of this running track, too, is that it was never used for an athletics meeting.
As for the pitch, it was short of grass, sanded and not looking great on the day we visited. March is a great month for growth, however, so one suspects it will be much better come the night.
One suspects, too, that win, lose or draw, the Irish will enjoy themselves in Bari.
Go there
If you’re intending to organise your own travel to Bari, you should fly via London, Rome or Milan, as there are no direct scheduled flights from Ireland.
Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies from London Stansted to Bari’s Palese Airport.
Alitalia (www.alitalia.com) flies from both Linate and Malpensa airports, in Milan.
If you prefer to travel via Rome, you can reach Bari by aircraft or train. Alitalia’s flights take an hour to link the two cities; the train takes more than four hours (www.trenitalia.com).
Fans intending to travel the 700km from Rome to Bari by car should be aware that the trip takes seven hours in normal traffic.
Where to stay, where to eat and where to go
Where to stay
Hotel Adria. Via Zuppetta 10, 00-39-0805-246699, www.adriahotelbari.com. Modern hotel very close to the seafront that might not be an architectural wonder but does seem very comfortable and functional. In theory, two single nights for €100. In practice nearly all the Bari hotels have long been booked out.
Hotel Boston. Via Piccinni 155, 00-39-0805-246802, www.bostonbari.it. Another modern three-star hotel with a great location, close to the seafront and Bari Vecchia. Rooms are functional. €75 for a single, €95 for a double; match-day prices may be different.
Grand Hotel Leon D’Oro. Piazza Aldo Moro 4, 00-39-0805-235040, www.grandhotelleondoro.it. Central hotel close to the railway station that looks better than its rather 1970s exterior would suggest.
Where to eat
The Piazza del Ferrarese area is full of choices, but for anyone wanting something more formal we recommend
Ai 2 Ghiottoni (Via Putignani 11, 00-39-0805-232240, www.ai2ghiottoni.it); Ai 2 Ghiottoni (Via Amendolia 197, 00-39-0805-467134), which is a pizzeria of the same name; and
Taverna Verde (Largo Adua 19, 00-39-0805-540870), on the seafront.
What to eat
Bari offers its own cuisine – and a very good one, too. Given that this a port, clams, cuttlefish, prawns, mussels and other seafood can be recommended. For those, like the writer, less enthusiastic about seafood, the traditional Pugliese pasta, oriechette, are a must. This curious ear-shaped pasta is best served with tomato and basil.
One easily consumed food that is sure to go down well with a lot of fans is focaccia bread, a sort of stuffed pizza that you can buy fresh (with or without delicious mozarella and ricotta cheeses) from bakeries.
As for wine, there is no shortage of choice. If you are looking for a white, you could do worse than Gravina, Locorotondo or Martina Franca; in the red corner, pay plenty of respect to the many versions of Primitivo di Manduria, perhaps the region’s best-known wine.
Where to go
Castel del Monte (www.castellodelmonte.it). North of Bari and to the south of the town, Trani is a place the Da Vinci Code writer, Dan Brown, could have come up with. The remarkable octagonal 13th-century Castel del Monte is a total enigma. Built largely of the bright local trani stone, and standing tall on a 500m hillside, it dominates all around. As you travel along a lonely country road through hectare after hectare of olive groves, there it is in front of you, splendid and imposing. Yet what is it doing there? Built by Holy Roman Emperor Friedrick II, it looks unusual for a castle, in that it apparently contains no serious defences, such as a moat, a drawbridge or arrow slits. Then, too, there is its extraordinary shape, eight connecting circular rooms flanked by eight towers in a glorious construction that seems to represent a meeting of Islamic and Christian, of European and Middle Eastern traditions. Did the Crusader Friedrick intend to live there or did he build it just as a statement of power and intent? Go and decide yourself.
Trani (www.traniweb.it). On your way back from Castel del Monte, stop off in Trani, a port town that gives its name to the bright, handsome stone that dominates Puglia. The outskirts of this port are as ugly as a town can get, but the port itself is glittering gem built entirely of trani rock.
Alberobello (www.alberobello.net). Like Castel del Monte, this is now a Unesco World Heritage site – and, like the castle, is a remarkable place. Above all, Alberobello features the trullo house, a sort of one-room stone dwelling that looks like an upturned acorn. Carefully built, the tiny trullo house manages to be warm in winter and cool in summer. Despite the size, the average trullo would house an entire family and its livestock. This is a must-see.
Church of St Nicholas (www.basilicasannicola.it). The weekend we were in Bari the city was being visited by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, there to receive the symbolic ownership of a Russian Orthodox Church named after St Nicholas. The church in question, in the Carassi quarter of Bari, was built by the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, who wished to offer Russian Orthodox pilgrims a place to worship when in Bari. Orthodox faithful had been making the pilgrimage to Bari for nearly 1,000 years in order to worship at the relics of Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century saint whose generosity saw him metamorphosed into the figure of Santa Claus. In 1087 the burghers of Bari had launched a naval expedition to Myra, ostensibly to save the saint’s relics from invading Turks. The move, of course, put Bari on the lucrative circuit of mediaeval pilgrimages. Both Orthodox and Catholic figures see the handover of this church as another important step towards mending the 1,000-year-old schism between the two Churches.
Getting around
On match day plenty of public transport will be heading towards the San Nicola, but, given the traffic, leave yourself a clear half-hour to get there by bus. Bari is relatively small, so on non-match days shank’s mare may be your best bet. Taxis are not immediately obvious in the town, but plenty are available at the airport, from where the trip into town should cost about €20.
Personal safety
Bari has a bad reputation (see main story) for petty crime and theft, but this is greatly exaggerated. The visitor need only take all the precautions you would take anywhere – so do not walk around alone, late at night, with your wallet sticking out of your back pocket.