WONDER GROTTOLE
About us
Wonder Grottole is a social enterprise born to regenerate the village of Grottole (MT) through the recovery of abandoned buildings and the integration of new energies with the local community. It enhances housing, agriculture, business and tourism, promoting an active and sustainable tourism model.
A story of urban regeneration
Wonder Grottole is a social enterprise born in 2018 of which we are founding members Silvio Donadio, Valentina La Terza, Andrea Paoletti and Claudia Pattarini. Our goal is to promote the regeneration of the historic center of the village of Grottole (MT) thanks to the recovery of some disused houses, combined with the attraction of new energies from the outside in connection and exchange with the local community, in such a way as to create new views, ideas, opportunities that can be signals of change capable of helping to generate trust and reactivate the local economy.
In recent decades, the town has in fact undergone a progressive emigration, which has led above all to an abandonment of the historic centre: today only 300 inhabitants live there (more than 60% are over 70) and it has over 600 abandoned buildings, thus reducing the central areas of the town to the periphery, and in which a feeling of mistrust towards the future prevails in the local community, especially due to the continuous impoverishment of the younger generations.
It is about facilitating generative short circuits, new encounters and bonds, while at the same time taking care of the territory that one crosses and that one decides to inhabit, even if only temporarily: it is no coincidence that Wonder Grottole itself was born thanks to a slow journey "of inspiration and territorial exploration" (the Netural Walk promoted every year by Casa Netural di Matera) and to a meeting: in 2013 the Netural Walk stopped in Grottole and from the exchange with the inhabitants and in particular with Silvio, the first seeds of initiatives began to be sown, such as the participatory mapping of abandoned buildings.
A laboratory country
Grottole is a laboratory-town, where it is possible to experiment with pilot projects for the regeneration of material and immaterial heritage, based on the connection between the local community and external energies, through different devices (residences, co-design, calls,..) and using different objects from time to time (disused buildings, historical monuments, local memory,..).
We work on 4 assets: living (both buildings and ways of “living”), agriculture, business and tourism – bringing them together with “local products” – ceramics, honey, wine and oil – and enhancing the landscape peculiarities – cellars/caves system, rural agriculture and San Giuliano Nature Reserve. The origins of Grottole themselves are an inspiration for our actions: the oldest nucleus dates back to prehistory, so much so that it is considered one of the oldest in all of Basilicata; furthermore, crossed by the Appian Way, Grottole was once a crossroads of people and economies from north to south.
Wonder Grottole implements a new model of tourism, the 4.0 one, an evolution of previous tourisms because it is capable of systematizing the recovery of the territory, favoring urban regeneration and creating a new tourist offer, capable of increasing the quality of life as well as favoring and generating new economies. The ideal tourist for Grottole is a tourist who does not live the territory passively, who in addition to living the experiences offered by the locals, contributes to increasing them by becoming a protagonist himself. The tourist who visits Grottole becomes a real temporary inhabitant of the village. It brings and exchanges skills, values with the territory and its resources, in a harmonious relationship with the local people.
Tourism 4.0
The 4.0 tourism initiative that made Grottole known worldwide was Italian Sabbatical in 2019, created in collaboration with Airbnb: an international call for the search for 5 volunteers to which over 280,000 people responded in just one month and thanks to which we hosted Pablo (Argentina), Darrell (USA), Remo (UK), Helena (Canada), Anne (Philippines), who became "temporary inhabitants" for three months, making their skills available for the relaunch of the village.
2019 was also the year of the inauguration of the Wonder Casa, created through the recovery of an abandoned building in the historic center, as a tangible sign of the project as well as a place to host temporary tourists-inhabitants and a reference for Wonder Grottole initiatives with the community.
Among the guests of the Wonder Casa we like to mention Davide and Carlo, in 2020 designers who won the residency for the design of the integrated community apiary Wonder Bee, born from an idea of the beekeeper from Grottole Rocco Filomeno: a hybrid space of connection and exchange between man and nature, a microarchitecture to be built with the hands starting from a great vision of sustainable development, which will soon become reality thanks to the success of the crowdfunding campaign.
To continue with the examples, the families of Grottole in 2018 and 2019 opened their homes to students from all over Italy for the residential workshops of the Master in Relational Design.
In 2020, however, we received over 500 projects through the international architectural competition on the Diruta Church, promoted in collaboration with Reuse Italy Bcorp, which gave rise to the exhibition “La fragile bellezza” hosted throughout the historic center thanks to the extraordinary opening of some uninhabited houses.
