We The Italians | Italian good news: Castellana caves, when tourism has no barriers

Italian good news: Castellana caves, when tourism has no barriers

Italian good news: Castellana caves, when tourism has no barriers

  • WTI Magazine #25 Apr 11, 2014
  • 1576

WTI Magazine #25    2014 Apr, 11
Author : buonenotizie.it      Translation by:

 

Just imagine traveling miles - three to be exact - in a scenario hanging in the balance between Dante's "Inferno" and Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". Stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, calcite crystals twinkling in the dark.

The silence dominates, clocked only by a soft trickle. Then the path opens up and suddenly, right there - in the bowels of the earth - everything becomes light: you have arrived at the Grotta Bianca, a true miracle of the karst system that cuts the primordial darkness of the underground scenario, a sort of underground cathedral where everything is white.

We are in the province of Bari, in Castellana, in the heart of those that are considered by some the most beautiful caves in Italy. The Castellana Caves represent a true flagship for the Puglia region, attracting droves of visitors every year. The trump card, however, is not only the undeniable beauty of the complex, but also the intelligence and creativity with which the caves experience every day a new model of tourism, really open to everyone (disabled in the first place) and ready to provide novel types of visit.


In synergy with the CASA Consortium (Consortium for specialized activities for different abilities), the Castellana caves have indeed traced itineraries for people with disabilities feasible not only from a structural standpoint, but also on an emotional level. The secret is to create "synesthetic paths" built and enhanced through the use of "musicarterapia" (therapy with music and art): it is - in other words – about compensating a sensory deficit through the use of another sense.

An example? The use of some modulations of the voice, that in the caves allow blind people to perceive and reconstruct, through their second language, a sensory dimension of the cave. The goal of the initiative is wide-ranging and clearly does not end in an attempt to boost the flow of tourists, but aims at a true reintegration of the disabled in the tourism system and at a radical transformation of the concept of disability, not as barrier but as different methods of use.

In this sense, the experience of the Castellana caves - currently unique in Italy - is complementary to other European projects, for example in France, that develop similar conditions, facilitating the integration of people with disabilities as independent entities within the daily reality. It is a radical rethinking of the concept of "normality" that could open up new scenarios not only for the disabled, but for everybody.

Such as in the case of the "Concerti al buio" (Concert in the dark) by Cesare Piccu, even the Caves of Castellana offer the blind the opportunity to experience a completely new mode of use through "Speleonight": a visit to the caves that is made partly in the dark, and that through strengthening the auditory dimension, returns by reflex to the visitor something that usually remains totally unheeded, the "voice of the cave". A new dimension of darkness and silence.