What is happening inside ten historic buildings in Manduria, told as it happens.
The wall went up with six hands on it: one man marks the block with a pencil, one cuts it with a hand saw, one sets it into the course. Then at one o'clock the site closes and everyone sits at the same table. That second part is not a break from the work. It is where the next decision gets taken.
The first blocks of the hamam went down in the morning. The drawing came later, sketched on a notebook in the middle of the room while the wall was already going up. That is how this house gets built: you decide with the thing in front of you, not from a desk two hundred kilometres away.
Number 13, in the old town. The door has been restored, not replaced: it goes back exactly where it has always been.
An original floor of cementine, the patterned cement tiles these houses have always had, under the dust. It stays. Nothing here gets covered over.
A green tarp over the gate asks whoever walks by one question. Behind it, the courtyard is taking shape. For now, the answer is yes.
Plaster is going onto the stone vaults of the Gymnásion, by hand. Twenty-five centuries ago the Greeks of these shores built one place for the body, the mind and the community. This room takes that name seriously.
It arrived over the rooftops, held by a crane. Now it stands in the middle of the courtyard, between the two arches. A retreat about long life needed something alive at its centre.
Five months for two arches. A wooden centring, tufo blocks cut by hand, and masons who work the way this courtyard was built the first time. When the centring came down, the arches stood.
New episodes as the work moves forward, until the doors open in Summer 2027.
The vaults reappearing, the neighbours' stories, the Founding Members counter. Written by Mario.