ENRICO MARTINO

Bari, the East begins at the bottom of a staircase in the heart of the old city. Himns impregnated by the Orthodox spirituality go up from the steps of the crypt to large Romanesque nave of the Basilica of San Nicola. St. Nicholas of Myra, also known by the Orthodox church as The Wonderworker, rests in a tomb surrounded by golden stoles and tiaras of bishops and deacons coming from every place of Russia, of which he is the revered patron. Behind a grate the faithful Russians, Romanians, Georgians, wait to stop for a moment in front of the tomb, brush her with a kiss or leave a prayer with the names of friends and relatives. They come here from centuries on May, thirteen days after the Catholics according to the Julian calendar, transforming the Mediterranean flavour of the old city in a Orthodox town to celebrate the "shift" of the relics of St. Nicholas. An elegant metaphor for what the monks of Myra, in today Western Turkey, considered the theft of the holy relics of their bishop, after they refused to sell his body to a merchant ship from Bari. So from the crusaders times the cult of St. Nicholas aka Santa Klaus, an identification born in Nordic countries, is strong not only in Bari bat also in many countries of Eastern Europe and after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the church attracts every year thousands of Orthodox pilgrims. In the last years also the Russian church built by the last Czar, Nicholas II, thanks also to the personal intervention of Mr Putin, the architectural complex was returned to Russian Federation in March of 2009.