Press Tour of the Paduli in Salento
16 July 2025
An experience of community and territorial regeneration to combat social and landscape desertification
A group of journalists and representatives of Foundations visited the Paduli Park in lower Salento during the press tour “Visions with the South. Press tour of the Paduli in Salento,” promoted and organized by the Fondazione Con il Sud. The initiative’s goal was to bring to public attention the extraordinary community and regeneration experience underway in this vast inland area of 5,500 hectares in the province of Lecce, stretching across eight small municipalities, each with fewer than two thousand inhabitants: Botrugno, Giuggianello, Muro Leccese, Nociglia, Sanarica, San Cassiano, Supersano, and Surano.
Here, since 2022, the “Santi Paduli” project, supported by the Fondazione Con il Sud and coordinated by LUA – Laboratorio Urbano Aperto (Open Urban Laboratory), has launched a “construction site for change” for the demographic and social regeneration of the area. Associations, municipalities, schools, farmers, small businesses, and citizens are collaborating to combat depopulation, focusing on landscape, sustainable agriculture, and healthy food, and offering young people the opportunity to stay, return, or move to this territory.
This model aligns with the Foundation’s three-year programmatic plan, presented in March, which identifies combating depopulation in the South, and thus the demographic and social “regeneration” of communities, as the strategic objective of interventions for the 2025-2027 triennium.
We visited Uliveto pubblico (the Public Olive Grove) and Bosco del parco (the Park’s Woodland), which aim to regenerate the landscape severely affected by Xylella, the killer bacteria which has dramatically impacted olive trees in Salento. We explored the Opificio dei frutti minori (Minor Fruits Factory), a former warehouse that has been repurposed to process fruits typically excluded from large-scale commercial distribution. We got to know La Buona Mensa (the Good Food Hall) up close, the public catering service launched in the Unione dei Comuni delle Terre di Mezzo (Union of Municipalities of the Middle Lands). The good food, that is, healthy, locally sourced (km 0), environmentally friendly, food that supports both producers and the local economy, is used in school and private preschool meals across the eight municipalities. Managed by the Santa Fucina Cooperative, born within the Santi Paduli project, La Buona Mensa service also includes a “Menu Parlante” (Talking Menu), which, for the first time, names each supplier and classifies the products by origin and certification. In 2025, La Buona Mensa received the award in the “Piccoli ma Grandi” (“Small but Great”) category from Foodinsider, the observatory on school cafeterias that annually monitors the state of the school catering services. We met some of the companies involved in La Buona Mensa, visiting them and also being able to appreciate their products at the Agricultural Osteria – Taste Laboratory, a cultural and social space centred around food. We met the people involved in this extensive journey of change: operators, mayors, entrepreneurs, farmers, workers, teachers, families, and artists.
Learn more about the Santi Paduli project>>
Watch the video story below:
Credits: Papel Studio
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Credits: Papel Studio
Listen to the voices of the tour participants in this video on ConMagazine
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