Somewhat surprising — and yet, the surroundings are all too familiar. The main square, the cathedral, the yellowish hue of the stones.
Daniela and Agostino are about to open up the secrets of Distilleria De Giorgi, a one-of-a-kind former industrial complex in the unpretentious San Cesario, a stone’s throw from Lecce.
At first sight, the building we are about to explore could just be one of the many distilleries of a small town in Southern Italy. But as we cross the entrance, our shepherds warn us that this is no ordinary place.
Daniela and Agostino's storytelling is passionate, and we are thankful that it is their words guiding our eyes and ears. Hadn’t it been for them, we would not have learned about the international relevance of distillery production in the 1900s. We would not have discovered the glorious memories of the citizens of this ‘quite unremarkable’ town, which they have been collecting meticulously for years.
The uncovering of old memories is like a history rush. We are in the right place.
As we walk through the recently restored production rooms, we look at old-fashioned bottles and silos, which seem to have more than a story to tell. The space is vast, and smells of a long-gone era. Machinery leaning against the walls is coated thickly in dust, and yet its splendor remains. We’re looking at an unprompted museum.
The unfortunate story of this place has an undoubtedly tragic appeal to it. Following decades of restless activity, it ended abruptly, sometime in the late 90s. The owners, the titular De Giorgi family, ran out of money, the place was devoid of people overnight. Operations ceased and never resumed.
What once was a vast, populous, energizing area — an out-and-out city within a city, complete with street numbers — turned into a ghost town whose headstones are still very much visible today.
Just like that? we ask. Just like that.
The rise, the fall, and the unspeakable silence that ensued.
What leaves us speechless is how careless we can be toward our own roots. How can such a place be left in decay, busy with nothing just because a commercial venture has come to an end? How come does politics manage to leave a literal city-sized hole unattended, with nothing but nature to reclaim the void? It genuinely hurts to see such a thing play out. Daniela and Agostino can’t help but sigh and shrug. ‘We know’, they seem to say. It is a tale far from unheard of, unfortunately, but the scale of it all makes it borderline impossible to accept. In some form, it is still there. Right there. In some others, it isn’t.
Luckily there are people like our guides today, whose tireless commitment to preserving the memories of the communities keeps these places alive. To an extent: a sign at the entrance of the production area still warns visitors that access is only allowed to the staff on duty. If only.
De Giorgi’s was the distillery par excellence in the south of Italy, they tell us. It wasn’t just an abnormally large industrial hub for a small urban center in poor, underdeveloped Puglia, but a place renowned internationally for the production of Anisetta, an anise-flavored liqueur that became the distillery’s crown jewel. The spirit even became some sort of celebrity at one point, as it appeared in Michael Curtiz’s famous Casablanca.
The more we learn about the distillery’s glorious past, the more we touch the soul of this giant construction. It carries a formidable heritage in the industrial archaeology panorama; and, indeed, a truly unique story in the predominantly rural Salento.
We get lost amid the machines, until we end up in the ‘backyard’ of the complex. Unexpectedly vast, despite having been told repeatedly that the place is big. The red rays of the sun start to set down above the rusty steel silos, left perfectly untouched. We could be in Berlin, Rotterdam, or Manchester with the same surroundings but a different consciousness. An unfamiliar view around here. Like a movie set.
Our guides keep going, freight trains would here to load up the spirits and ship them across the country. The volumes were far from tiny.
What remains accessible today — fights with the local administrations notwithstanding — is turned into an art residency of sorts, which people can access freely. Sometimes, keen souls take it on their shoulders to breathe a little life out of and into these walls. But it’s hard.
More people should come and see — this is history, this is identity. And also, importantly, people: Agostino, devoted to theatre, and Daniela, an expert of sound art and design, are trying to create an impact on the community.
One of their recent and remarkable projects is called the Sound Community Archive. During the lockdown, they set up a phone line which citizens could call to recount memorable anecdotes of one of their fellows, then grouped together and made accessible to visitors thanks to QR codes spread across town.
They have given voice to the untold stories of a small community, and proved that the past can be a spring that projects us into the future. They made sure that gone things — people — would stay, as memories to be passed on.
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