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VitoVito Guerra’s day job is a house painter and decorator. In his free time he’s a talented street performer, and the supposed heir of a legendary Italian comedian known as Piripicchio. His band members consist of his sons and nephews. With paint-stained hands, he performs his comedy throughout southern villages to the amazement of the locals, and he often performs in hospices and boroughs with a high crime rate. He is not Piripicchio for the money: His vaudeville theater is rooted in the street and entry is free of charge. He does it, he says, because people need to laugh.
Photograph by Reed Young

Meet the local legends of this Italian town by the sea

Bari’s residents say things you’ve never heard, hold jobs that don’t exist, and share tales you cannot repeat.

Photographs byReed Young
ByGiulia Barcaro
Art Direction byAntonio Piccirilli
April 3, 2019
5 min read

This story is about Bari, a port city in the south of Italy, home to around 300,000 people, and fertile ground for human authenticity.

We’ve all heard of far flung islands that have become a cradle for biodiversity. A sanctuary for unique species that would have otherwise been destroyed by mainstream predators or development. Bari is like one of those islands, yet it became so not thanks to its isolation, but because it is—literally and metaphorically—a harbor. Bari’s port is, most poetically, the unchosen destination of flotsam that reach a shore. They say in Bari that nobody is a stranger.

In many other urban contexts, peculiarity is bridled and concealed behind closed doors. In Bari, deviating from the norm is an integral part of the city’s DNA. The mild climate and the inhabitants’ sense of humor has allowed this eccentricity to spread to the streets. You still have to look closely; amongst Bari’s provincialism, its treasures may not be evident at a first glance. Your second glance, though, would be truly rewarding.

a resident of Bari, Italy
Mariellina

Mariellina Lorusso Cipparoli is the 97-year-old daughter of an Italian coffee tycoon. When she was young, she would drive through Puglia’s farmland to look for rare collectables. When asked what her favorite piece was, she answered that unfortunately she will never be able to have it, because it is located in Bari’s cemetery. He was a housekeeper who risked his life to protect young Mariellina in a dangerous situation. “He was a unique piece,” she says. At 92, she completed a collection of 400 horses that she keeps in the salon of her palace. She has never ridden one.

Photograph by Reed Young
a resident of Bari, Italy
Vittorio

Professor Vittorio Marzi breeds 350 varieties of roses in the backyard of Bari’s 19th-century villa “La Rocca.” Every true Renaissance garden should please one’s sense of sight, sound, and smell. For this reason, he keeps chirping birds in an aviary and water gushing in the mansion’s fountains. Professor de Marzi is president of the prestigious Georgofili Academy, a society consecrated in 1753 to protect plants and trees with the help of science. Most rose varieties are named after beautiful women such as Liz Taylor, Princess Diana, Cleopatra, and Maria Callas. He never married and devoted his life to roses instead.

Photograph by Reed Young
a resident of Bari, Italy
Froukjie

After falling in love with a young doctor she met on holiday, Froukjie Van der Harst moved from the Netherlands to Canosa di Puglia, a little village about an hour’s drive from Bari, in the 1960s. She was the only woman to shop for vegetables in the village square, populated only by men. She had to learn how to shout in the local dialect: She wouldn’t learn Italian until 14 years later, when she moved to Bari. She now runs an English class for Bari’s elders, many of whom have kids that emigrated abroad. They’re thankful to Froukjie, as they can finally exchange a few words with their young grandchildren at Christmas.

Photograph by Reed Young

Unique characters populate pavements and sit behind shop counters, flourishing from the fanciest palace all the way to the local cemetery. They will say things you have never heard before, have jobs that don’t exist, share tales you cannot repeat, and look like no one else. Their authenticity is so potent that you start to doubt your own.

For those born in Bari Vecchia, the Old Town, the labyrinthine streets were their teacher. Bari’s school of life was wilder and more visionary. Before cars sanitized the scene, its narrow roads must have been a visual paradise, a temple of the unexpected, crawling with life, smells, and sounds. These traces are still visible.

Are these characters relics of a glorious Italian past? The truth is that nobody knows. Like many towns on the Adriatic Sea, Bari’s ancient belly has grown new limbs that extend towards modernity, with shopping areas and endless parking bays.

Bari draws its magic from the tension that Italy bears as a whole; torn between its past and its future, in the hope that both dimensions will survive, and none shall prevail. While many cities are besieged by a crusade of globalization, the best way to champion oddity is to celebrate it. Bari’s characters have no beginning, and as far as we like to imagine, no end.

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Reed Young is a New York-based photographer focused on telling stories of people who live outside the spotlight. Follow him on Instagram @reedyoung.
Antonio Piccirilli is a Rome-based art director and designer. His work crosses boundaries between different disciplines and visual languages. Follow him on Instagram @antonio_piccirilli.
Giulia Barcaro is a London-based Creative Director. She is a visual storyteller and has a sweet spot for the most audacious assignments. Follow her on Instagram @_giuliabarcaro_.