Excitement fills the air. The Italian southern region of Puglia is preparing to host the upcoming G7 heads of state and government summit next week, from June 13-15. Local authorities are confident the event will put Puglia on the global map, and they expect an influx of millions of tourist euros.
Premier Giorgia Meloni can’t wait to wow her guests with the luxury venue she has picked for the event – which also happens to be one of her favourite holiday destinations. She goes there to unplug, with her daughter and family.
The luxury resort is called Borgo Egnazia, and world leaders are going to be stuck there for three days.
It’s much more than a simple hotel. It’s a microcosm, you enter the arched portal and forget about the external world. The white-washed gritty stone architecture recalls that of an ancient traditional borgo (hamlet).
There are eight restaurants, several bars, a huge infinity pool, a beach club, a sauna, plus a cluster of villas with columns, studios, and luxury suites. I wonder how the G7 leaders will get to focus on key global issues with all of these distractions around them.
It’s like staying at a typical Puglia village, with an inner court and cobbled alleys lined with lemon and olive trees. Its creators wanted to offer guests a real throwback: the experience of living in an ancient place. Guests can learn traditional tomato squeezing techniques, watch horse rides and learn to make traditional pasta.
I’m a fan of these “hamlet resorts”. These are places in Italy that used to be ghost villages and were then restored by enlightened entrepreneurs, who turned them into holiday retreats.
The venue picked by Meloni has always fascinated me, and I recently had the chance of visiting. But there was something about it that seemed off. Everything was too perfect, too ordered, too idyllic. And when I started digging into the history of Borgo Egnazia, I discovered something odd – it doesn’t have any history.
It’s fake-old. I thought the resort was built on the ashes of an ancient masseria, a type of Puglian farmhouse, where sheep and goats used to graze and shepherd families slept on mattresses on the floor. Over time, these farmsteads tended to grow, eventually taking on the semblance of a rural hamlet.
But not this one. I learned – to my surprise – that the resort was built from scratch in 2010 copying Puglia’s ancient borgo architecture, so it’s not a restyled authentic abandoned hamlet at all.
Most of the guests are either from the States, the UK or elsewhere in Europe. I saw very few Italians around. Most foreigners don’t really care if they don’t get the authentic experience, as long as it looks Italiano. But Italians like me really want to know where they’re staying.
But who cares about digging beyond appearances? I’m pretty sure world leaders gathering there for the G7 meeting will be amazed by the venue, and Meloni will bask in all its glory.
Eight years after Italy’s last, more understated G7 summit in lavish Taormina, Sicily, where the most fancy moment was the (Trump-less) group statement at the ancient Greek theatre with views of Mount Etna, this time there will be a lot of fancy stuff going on at Borgo Egnazia during the summit.
But Borgo Egnazia isn’t Taormina, there’s no Greek theatre, and perhaps one or two of Meloni’s guests will likely want to venture outside the resort, to take in the real, authentic Puglia.
And if they do head outside, they will find pristine beaches, plains dotted with sheep, roads lined with brick walls and majestic olive trees. There are centuries-old churches and sleepy villages. At noon it’s so hot people stay shut inside their homes.
Silvia Marchetti is a freelance journalist based in Rome
