Our Irish language Officer recently travelled to Bari, Italy, for a collaboration with Wikimedia Italia and a surprising celebration of Irish culture which is alive and well in the city! Read on to find out what happened during the exchange.
Why Bari?
Back in September 2024, at Celtic Knot, we crossed paths with two kindred spirits: Dr Maristella Gatto from the University of Bari’s Research and Innovation in the Humanities Department and Ferdinando Traversa from Wikimedia Italia. Their lighting talk on an Irish-Italian translation project lit a spark – students at UniBa were learning about Bloody Sunday by translating articles from English Wikipedia into Italian.
We promised we’d keep the conversation going, and this April, that promise turned into a plane journey to Puglia.
The collaboration was also inspired by the legacy of the late Prof. Rosangela Barone, beloved on both sides of the Irish Sea. A fluent Irish speaker, Prof Barone opened Italian doors (and eyes and ears) to writers such as Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, Alan Titley, and even ancient epics like the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and, with her close friend Melita Cataldi, painstakingly carried much of Lady Gregory’s theatre into Italian. For this visit we drew on a reader she helped shape: a sweep of Irish poetry from the 6th to the 20th century, each poem newly alive in Italian – proof that words travel as surely as people do.
The University of Bari
Day 1 – Saturday 12 April
I landed in Bari at 22:00 to the warmest of welcomes – Maristella herself waiting at arrivals with her husband (who had also come to Waterford for Celtic Knot last year), beaming and waving like family. Bari’s sea air, the hum of the city and Maristella’s hospitality told me straight away I was in great hands, and looking forward to exploring more after a post-travel sleep.
Day 2 – Museums, Dialects & Focaccia
Breakfast was with Ferdinando, a cappuccino, and a flaky pasticciotto al pistacchio that could have converted the staunchest porridge-lover to pastry for breakfast.
We spent the morning inside the Museo Archeologico di Santa Scolastica, a former Benedictine monastery turned time capsule. Stone corridors brought us from 19th-century Bari back to protohistoric foundations; the building is as much an artefact as the artefacts it houses. The displays at the museum were projected onto the ancient walls, preserving the integrity of the architecture while providing an interactive and engaging presentation of the history and heritage of the building. We saw lots and lots of pottery and Ferdinando was the best tour guide, really knowledgeable (like a walking Wikipedia or WikiVoyage) filling me in on local knowledge and the history as we walked around the museum, but also Bari itself.
[Image – Image of Courtyard inside the Museo Archeologico – PXL_20250413_104612592.LS_exported_5898_1746542315884.jpg]
Lunch at Jascézze was a whirlwind of Pugliese tasting plates – starting with our cold pilates and salads and moving onto our warm plates, including a typical Bari dish called Tiella barese; an original and traditional recipe from the Apulia region with rice, mussels, and potatoes.
Tiella barese
The afternoon belonged to language. First, we met with some local Wikipedians, and then made our way to the Accademia della Lingua Barese “Alfredo Giovine” we met Felice Giovine, son of the legendary dialectologist Alfredo. Shelves groaned with dictionaries, books, theatre playbills lined the walls, and countless other publications in Barese. Wikimedia Italia is digitising the collection, and there was real joy in seeing an analogue treasure preparing for a digital rebirth and the interest and excitement in a regional language.
Evening: a roam through Bari’s Old Town, searching for slices of tomato-slick focaccia pulled straight from charcoal ovens – which was a tall order on a Sunday evening but with local Italianos I was in good hands and very soon we had fresh focaccia and a bag of Sgagliozza (a local delicacy of deep-fried polenta scallops.)
focaccia
We finished up by going to the Martinucci Laboratory (a pastry and gelato institution) for our dolce, of course, before we all headed home to bed – 24,000+ steps done for the day I was ready to hit the hay.
Day 3 – Lectures, Ceilí & Panzerotti
Fifty souls – students, staff, and locals with a grá for Ireland – filled the lecture hall.
My first lecture was a whistle-stop tour of Irish from Ogham stones to the current explosion of Irish language media, stopping at Old, Middle and Modern Irish, An Gortadh Mór, the Revival and today’s victories and vulnerabilities.
The second lecture was syntax and basic phrases; by coffee break people were introducing themselves as Is mise… and had their cúpla focal down as well as a basic understanding of the differences between English, Italian and Irish.
After lunch I ran a poetry-translation workshop – using poems from Nuala Ni Domhnaill and Máirtín Ó Direáin – this gave the students the opportunity to identify some of the syntax and grammar of Irish that we had gone through before lunch, and also a lesson in how directly translating from Irish to English doesn’t always work exactly.
After that we plunged into a mini-seisiún ceoil.
Rino Lorusso (whistle, uilleann pipes) gave a talk on Irish music and the history of the tin whistle, and the uileann pipes as well as an introduction to the types of Irish tunes and the differences between them. Rino was joined by Osvaldo Laviosa (on fiddle) and Pierpaolo Martino (Senior Lecturer of English Literature at the UniBa) slipped on bass. Pierpaolo then gave us an introduction to his love of Irish literature and more contemporary music.
Rino Lorusso giving an uillean pipe demonstration and history
Four brave students – Rossana Figliolia, Francesca Rauseo, Alessia Tricasi and Martina Granieri on clarinet – belted out U2’s ‘Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and The Cranberries’ classic ‘Zombie’ with a beautiful harmonic rendition for both songs.
I taught the Siege of Ennis to a few brave volunteers before the session ended.
Siege of Ennis Lesson
Dinner? Panzerotti – crescent pillows of dough oozing tomato, mozzarella and also a few other variants, like a very tasty ham and pistacchio version. An-bhlasta ar fad!
Day 4 – Ogham, Open-Source & Joy’s Place
On the fourth day of the trip, my morning lecture on Ogham, which I had touched on in the lecture on the previous day but got to explore and share more about it with the students, even doing some myth busting with them on the ‘Celtic Tree Zodiac’ misinformation that surrounds the oldest records we have of the early Irish language.
[Image – ogham talk bari.jpg]
Then a session on endangered-language projects across Wikimedia where I introduced students to our Wiki Women Erasmus+ Project, Celtic Knot, the Language Diversity Hub, Lingua Libre.
The afternoon moved into an Irish-Italian WikAthon where students translated pages on Irish dialects, history, and phonology into Italian. As most Wikipedians will attest, watching red links turn blue in real time is satisfying!
Night fell in Joy’s Place, Bari’s own Irish pub. Dinner was a bowl of stout stew, which was some of the nicest I have had, while Osvaldo’s fiddle reeled us from an introduction of Irish fiddle music and theory into yet a sing-song that swung from ‘Tell Me Ma’ to the ‘Seven Drunken Nights’.
Osvaldo on Fiddle
Day 5 – Medieval Irish Poetry, Castles & Burrata
Our final workshop tackled 13th-century Irish poetry on WikiSource – eight groups, two stanzas each, one beautifully reconstructed text on a single page, Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe
Farewells over a light lunch with delicious sandwiches filled with cured ham and mozzarella and lots of small sweet pastries to go with our coffees. Then, I met Ferdinando at the Castello Normanno-Svevo. Built by Roger II in 1132, razed, rebuilt by Frederick II, gifted to Bona Sforza, repurposed as a prison – its history is a palimpsest in limestone.
Castello Svevo
Lunch (because every good story in Bari ends with lunch) was all things Barese: orecchiette al ragù, deep-fried burrata, and lots more that I stopped naming and just enjoyed. Ferdinando kindly ferried me to the airport, stuffed with gratitude and a scandalous quantity of cheese and carbs, ready to nap on the plane home after a very packed, and incredibly inspiring, trip. We even had some students express their desire to learn Irish!
Looking Ahead
This week was proof that Wikipedia is a bridge, not a screen – between languages, disciplines and, most of all, people. Grazie mille – go raibh míle maith ag an Organising Committee – Maristella Gatto, Pierpaolo Martino, Francesco Meledandri, Francesco Sinigaglia and Ferdinando Traversa – as well as Claudia Corriero, the musicians, and every student who dared pronounce dia duit or go raibh maith agat with an Italian lilt, and suffered my very broken Italian pronunciation, which was heavily influenced by my Spanish and French basic competency.
I had such a warm welcome from everyone involved and it was a true joy to have gone on this trip and strengthened our connections through cultural collaboration. Before the first day of lectures was done, we were already plotting future collaborations and a programme for next year, and I flew home excited for the next chapter of our Irish-Italian alliance.
Slán go fóill, Bari. Ci vediamo l’anno prossimo!
Amy and Maristella
