Bologna, homeless as tour guides:

BOLOGNA - A sightseeing tour to discover a city different. Fragile. Human. Sometimes ironic, sometimes desperate. The city of tappetari, of solfanai, of the chewing of the night (the biassanòt) and of the metropolitan indians, but also the one where you can lose everything from today to tomorrow, "and we think that it can happen to you" .

A story that starts in the 1500's, from the collection of via Marsala and ends up in the waiting room of the station, "where I stayed for three years and I cries the heart every time that I come back," recalls Joseph. Behind him walks a small group of tourists with the headset: children, the elderly, families, and bologna, and it is not. To make the guides, in addition to Joseph, there are Biagio and Samantha. Joseph, a former chef, has lived in the street for three years, and Biagio live in a container without water, electricity and gas, Samantha, an entrepreneur with a disability and president of a theatre association, the homeless risked becoming, a few months ago, after an eviction: now he lives at the hotel of the Ball.

with them there is Clear Cariani, guide Ascom. The route that you have created, in collaboration with the Piazza Grande and Asp, it is called: “ Turn the card”, because the city that tell you everything unless coated. The first output has been Thursday, from 18 to 20. Replicate the 25th July and 1 August (booking required to giralacartolina@ gmail. com or on the phone 373.7566321).
"our idea", explains José Salgado of Piazza Grande, was to put emphasis on the skills of these people and not much about their fragility. In the past few months have done a training with some of the guides Ascom, now they are creating a start - up. We hope for them to become a job. We have already applied to be included in the publications of the Bologna Welcome" .

All from that in 1500 it was called the Opera Pia of the Poor who are ashamed, the headquarters of the Asp in via Marsala. "In this room," explains Samantha - were seated of its inhabitants wealthy. At the center was a citizen of the community who for some reason had lost everything and was there to ask if the day after would have been able to turn head high or ask for charity."

From the window of via Piella, Joseph tells the story of the washerwomen who washed the clothes with ash. Montagnola speaks Biagio, in one of his many lives was the tappetaro. "Here, anyone could apply the merchandise. Clay, silk, cotton: they called it the market of the Linden tree".

In the station, that August 2, 1980, he was also there. "I arrived at 10,40, I saw people burned, people black, charred. They told me that the train of my girlfriend had stopped in Parma and I broke into a run in the car like a crazy to find it: I did all the stations, hoping to meet her. At some point I saw a taxi together with others. He was on his way to Bologna". On the first binary Joseph reads the prayer of Pope John paul ii: "The station after the massacre was supposed to be a place of remembrance and prayer - says -instead of in the waiting room there still is, unfortunately, a lot of suffering."

Samantha in front of the Arena of the Sun, indicates a sleeping bag: "If you meet the owner and offer him a coffee. In the streets there are only showcases. And probably the people who sleep not wrong alone". © Reproduction reserved