Matera capitale europea della cultura 2019
It’s October 17, 2014, 5 pm, when the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Dario Franceschini, from the hall of the Higher Council of Cultural Heritage, in the seat of the Roman College, announces the name of the European capital of culture 2019. “It is Matera ”- he says, but the square had already understood this. The crowd gathered in Piazza San Giovanni, in the historic center, is so anxious to hear the response of the European Commission, gathered at that moment in Rome, that it has already understood the sequence of letters that the president, Steve Green typed on the tablet that he gave to Franceschini: “Matera”, indeed.
The announcement of the government member, therefore, is only the trigger point for one of the greatest roar of the crowd that the people of Matera will remember. The city of the Sassi, after the achievement of 1993, when it was made Unesco heritage, returns to the national and international news with an unprecedented target reached: representing the European cultural capital, leaving behind Siena, Perugia, Lecce, Ravenna and Cagliari, with 7 votes out of 13. And so it was: five years later, in 2019, Matera – and with it all of Basilicata – can represent a model of “community” cultural production and dissemination, from local to European, also consecrating its role as an international tourist destination.
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