Matera 2019: extraordinary year closed, bet won

(ANSA) - MATERA, 20 DEC - An extraordinary year. Tourist "boom" numbers. A bet won by Basilicata, by the Sude from the whole of Italy. Matera 2019 closes with a massive budget and, together with Plovid (Bulgaria) passes the baton from European Capital of Culture 2020 to Rijeka (Croatia) and Galway (Ireland). The last, long day of a year from Capital, started last January 19, was marked by the presence of the President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, and of the Ministers for Cultural Heritage and for the South, Dario Franceschini and Giuseppe Provenzano. In unison, they pointed out that 2019 must be "just" a starting point.
But the real starting point of an extraordinary year is set in a specific date: October 17, 2014, when, as an entrepreneur, it was Franceschini (also at the time Minister for Cultural Heritage) who wrote the name of Matera as an Italian city on a tablet designed to be the European Capital of Culture2019. In these five years - albeit with some passages, especially for the infrastructural aspect - the Cittàdei Sassi has "conquered" the world. It is no coincidence that only a few months have hosted the last film of 007 for several weeks. And so the latest figures speak of 865,000 overnight stays in the year that is about to end, with an excellent + 44% of foreign tourists. There were instead 1,228 events (of which 410 in various centers of Basilicata) organized by the Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation with a total of 328 thousand accesses, 74 thousand "passports" sold and 1,500 volunteers committed. However, these numbers are not enough to give the full idea of ​​the total redemption reached by Matera, only a few decades ago the "shame of Italy" due to the degradation of the Sassi. (HANDLE).