St. Nicholas colossal pro-statue association in Bari gets serious: issues notice

The public will remember the issue of the mega-statue of St. Nicholas that in Bari a group of citizens, gathered in the association “A Statue for St. Nicholas,” wants to erect at the entrance to the port of the Varco della Vittoria, near the Fiera del Levante: it would be a colossal monument of about 70 meters (including the 20-meter base), which would be seen even from several kilometers away. To give a term of comparison, the Statue of Liberty in New York is 93 meters high. The idea is, of course, accompanied by a thousand criticisms: even Mayor Antonio Decaro has commented on it: the project in fact does not exist, and in December the first citizen said that, in the absence of a project, “it’s like talking about aliens and unicorns.”

The association, however, is not giving up, and in order to remedy the absence of the project, the association has even published a "call for proposals " (the text of which has been posted on the association’s Facebook page) aimed at artists or creative people interested in proposing a project. The idea, the call reads, is that the statue “can represent an element of great national and international appeal in which the values that the saint embodies can be recognized, as well as a landmark and/or identity and cultural brand of Bari, Apulia (14 Apulian municipalities besides Bari boast his patronage) and the Mediterranean, in the function of a tourist-economic attractor and employment driver.”

“The monumental statue,” the notice specifies, “will have a final height of 70 meters, and will have to provide for the presence within it of a Nicolaean museum, an experiential theater, a Nicolaean studies center and also a toy library capable of playing for the children of the world (St. Nicholas/Santa Claus is known as the protector of childhood), as well as services (ticket office, bookshop, catering, bidding room for the maintenance of the statue and for good works, elevator, facilities for alternatively abled, etc.).” In short, not just a monument but even a religious-cultural complex, all within the body of Saint Nicolone. As for the location, there is talk of a “secular place, on a public or private site to be defined.” There is, however, one suggestion, the one recalled at the beginning of this article: the statue “should be placed at the entrance to the Varco della Vittoria inside the port of Bari, thus inserted in the city context between the Libertà and Fiera, Marconi, and San Girolamo quarters, as part of a larger redevelopment project of the area.”

There is a deadline for applications until Sept. 27. The committee will score the proposals that arrive and in a month will name the winner. Who, however, knows that he or she must assign to the association “the work with the rights of economic use, whereby theAssociation will acquire full and exclusive ownership and possession of the original specimens, as well as all the exclusive rights of economic use of said work, including but not limited to, the right of publication, the right to reproduce the work in any manner or form, the right of dissemination and communication to the public, including in interactive form and on telematic networks, as well as the right of distribution, without time limit and with extension of said rights to any territory in the world where the work may be used.”

What will happen next once the winner is selected? That is not yet clear, but in the meantime the association is moving forward determinedly, despite calls to stop the project of plunging a colossal St. Nicholas into the port of Bari: for many citizens who signed a petition launched in December, the statue is in fact “A colossal TRASH that will make us ridiculous in the eyes of the world.”

St. Nicholas colossal pro-statue association in Bari gets serious: issues notice

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