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"I describe myself as a small minister of a cultural superpower," says Culture Minister Giovanna Melandri. She is proud to say that, during her two years in office, the Culture Ministry "has been transformed from a marginal administration into one that counts. We have financed strategic projects with public money, restoring and giving back to the public masterpieces that had been under seemingly endless renovation." Melandri also has big plans for the future. "We will not stop making the treasures of the past available to the people," she vows. "We are about to launch nighttime illumination at Pompeii. We plan to double the exhibition space at the Accademia Museum in Venice. We are doubling the size of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence."
Melandri maintains that the culture of the past is not only relevant but also essential to the world of the 21st century. "It is not just some dusty thing that we have to conserve for the experts, it is an instrument of social development," she says. "And it is part of a value chain that has to do with the digital era. We are content providers of something that is essential to the competitiveness of this country."
As an example of what she means, Melandri says her Ministry has just signed an agreement with the state-owned R.A.I. broadcasting network to develop "a line of products based on new technologies — cd-roms, dvd, online projects. We're creating a virtual museum that will also be the core of the Ministry's Internet portal (www.beniculturali.it). We believe this is a key sector that, if combined with new technologies, can be a source of wealth, cultural identity and jobs."
After an hour's flight from Rome, I find myself in the teeming port city of Brindisi on the Adriatic coast. Suddenly it feels like the Third World. The dock area is crawling with people — Italians, Greeks, Albanians, Africans, Turks — all talking loudly, gesturing, arguing, laughing. It is here where boatloads of immigrants, most of them illegal, arrive in Italy from Albania and the former Yugoslavia. The main street is lined with cheap neon-lit cafés, gyro sandwich stands, money changers, low-rent travel agencies and — of course — a McDonald's.
I cool my heels in a seedy café for a couple of hours then board the Blue Star 1, a large Greek passenger ferry that will make the overnight trip across the Adriatic to Patras. The waters are calm and the trip passes uneventfully. At 9:30 a.m., we arrive in the gritty, nondescript port city of Patras. A ferry ride takes me across the Gulf of Corinth to Agios Nikolaos, where I hire a taxi for Delphi.
Delphi's main street is lined with souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels with names like Apollo, Parnassos, Dionysos and Epikuros. I take a room at the Hotel Hermes with a spectacular view of Mount Kirphys and the sea of olive trees that extends down to the blue waters of the Gulf. The hotel owner invites me to have coffee with him in the lobby. He is a practical businessman, favors the European Union, globalization, modernization. But to his mind, the country's economic future depends on tourists coming to ancient sites like Delphi. Apart from attracting tourist dollars, he argues that classical antiquity remains the bedrock of Greek identity. "We must still remember the ancient time of Greece," he says. "Because a people that doesn't remember their history will die."
Which is precisely why I have come to Delphi. If Europe's future is limited to start-ups, Internet cafés, e-commerce and McDonald's, it won't be Europe anymore. It will be Europe only if it stays in touch with its roots. And few European roots run deeper than those at Delphi. Probably no institution in the ancient world was as influential as the oracle of Apollo. From its origins in the 8th century B.C. until its decline in the 4th century A.D., pilgrims and potentates from all over the Greek world made their way here to listen to cryptic prophesies about their fate. Today, the remaining fragments of walls, stones, statues and columns, set against the spectacular background of the Phaedriades rocks, still evoke the spirit of the ancient cult.
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