The Return to the Land of the Fathers has finally begun. The wonderful journey that will reunite the community of the Julian city of Sardinia with the lands from which the families who gave life to this wonderful example of integration and inclusion came will start on Sunday 30 July from Fertilia, following a short ceremony that will be held in the port of Alghero.

After extensive preparation, necessary to tackle the more than 800 miles of navigation, the Klizia vessel will sail the routes of history, to accomplish a feat with a romantic flavour.

Emotion shines through on the face of Commander Giulio Marongiu, an exile who said goodbye to the city of Pola for the last time at just 8 years old. He never wanted to return to the city where he was born, too much pain for the suffering endured by his family, to which is perhaps added the fear of no longer recognizing the streets where as a child he ran carefree with his sister Laura and friends.

But today, on the threshold of his 85th birthday, which he will celebrate as he and his crew sail the waters of the Lazio Riviera, the time has come to come to terms with the past, to close that circle that saw him as the protagonist of a life full of alternating events, typical of that community on the eastern border.

Giulio, together with a crew composed of his son Federico, Mauro Manca, also the son and grandson of Fiume exiles, and Giuseppe Bellu, representative of the large Venetian and Ferrarese community that transformed Fertilia and the marshy Calich lagoon into a fertile and productive place, wants to make this journey at all costs: «My son and his friends have convinced me that it is right to return, and I have to succeed!».

After casting off from the small port of Fertilia, protected since 1957 by the winged Lion of San Marco, and saying goodbye to the City of Alghero, the vessel will pass under the cliff of Capo Caccia, a bastion to the north of the Gulf of Alghero, heading towards Stintino, the first stop on the journey. The journey will continue, touching the ports of Castelsardo, an ancient stronghold of the Doria family, Santa Teresa di Gallura, the last Sardinian stop on the journey, Solenzara and Bastia in Corsica, the Island of Capraia, Livorno and after two stops in Punta Ala and Porto Ercole it will be Civitavecchia's turn. It is in the Lazio port that the crew will celebrate the eighty-fifth birthday of its commander on 13 August, before continuing on to Fiumicino, Anzio and Gaeta, the last Tyrrhenian stop which hosted 3 refugee camps through which thousands of exiles from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia passed.

«Here in Gaeta, in the Caserma Cavour, now the Naval School of the Guardia di Finanza, my mother was born in 1951 – Mauro Manca, a member of the Klizia crew, tells us – My grandparents Mario Kucich and Leda Maucione were exiles from Fiume and stayed in Gaeta for about 2 and a half years before arriving in Fertilia».

The journey will then resume on August 25th from Ancona, in the Marche, so Ferrara will be the first major stop on the Return to the Land of the Fathers. After a stop in Rimini, the Klizia will dock in Porto Garibaldi while the crew will head to the Estense City, to meet Mayor Alan Fabbri. The Ferrarese farmers, together with the Venetian settlers, literally transformed the land around Fertilia, giving life to a community that has been able to distinguish itself over the years for its industriousness, which has given life to a series of agricultural productions of great quality for the time. Ferrara will then meet its Sardinian children and the meeting will be sealed with a toast with wine from the vineyards of Santa Maria la Palma, initially planted with the cuttings that the settlers brought from their native lands. It was precisely wine, together with hard work, that represented an element of aggregation and a medicine to fight nostalgia: «With this journey we do not want to rediscover only a page of the history of our country that is still little known – says Giuseppe Bellu, son of a Sardinian farmer and a Venetian mother – but we want to make those who will follow us rediscover the taste of that humanity and hard work thanks to which our Fathers have given us a happy life, not making us weigh on their sacrifices and in some cases their suffering, faced with dignity and great determination».

Along the Adriatic coast the Klizia will then resume its navigation towards Chioggia, a city from which, in the spring of 1948, 13 fishing boats departed with 53 families of exiles on board who had fled in particular from Istria. An adventurous journey that took them to Sardinia, to reach Fertilia, a destination desired by a young priest, Don Francesco Dapiran, who like a modern Ulysses allowed them to find a fertile place in which to make the seed of a new life germinate. The next stop will be Venice, the city whose symbol Fertilia bears the effigies represented by the Leone Marciano, the westernmost of the Serenissima, and the Bell Tower of the Church dedicated to San Marco, built by will of Don Francesco in the mid-50s.

"Our identity is intimately linked to the City of Venice, which with its influence has represented and still represents today the Ferrarese, Julian Dalmatian and obviously Venetian communities that live in Fertilia - says Federico Marongiu - We are proud of this and in fact on our sail stands out the Winged Lion that represents Fertilia. Obviously this pride is closely linked to a visceral bond that unites us to Sardinia, a wonderful Land of Welcome of which we feel we are children and towards which we have a great love".

The vessel will then head towards Trieste, the moral capital of the exodus, which will represent a first reunion with the roots of the Julian-Dalmatian community. Giulio Marongiu will participate in many particularly important events, before heading towards Istria and then concluding his navigation once again in the halberd city. First, an event will be held in Muggia, an Italian outpost in Istria desired by the local administration in collaboration with the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia and the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Fiumana and Dalmatian Culture, then in the City of Trieste he will participate in two events, at the headquarters of the Società Triestina della Vela and one organized by the Giuliani nel Mondo Association, which has always been linked to the Julian people who live outside the regional borders.

From September 21st to 24th, Gorizia will be the city's turn, a symbol of the eastern border. In 2025, it will celebrate, along with Nova Gorica, the European Capital of Culture, finally marking the fall of a fence that for many years represented a Berlin Wall for Italy and Slovenia. The participation of the Klizia crew , along with the community of Fertilia, strongly supported by the Mayor of the Isonzo city, Rodolfo Ziberna, represents an important opportunity to introduce the seven hundred thousand visitors who annually attend the Gusti di Frontiera festival to the cultural richness and heritage of the Fertilia community and its territory.

Giulio Marongiu's vessel, with its full crew, will then sail through the Istrian waters, first reaching Koper, then Piran in Slovenia, and finally reaching the city of Rovinj in Croatia.

 

 

"It will be a great emotion for me to set foot for the first time on that land, which I abandoned as a child - says Giulio Marongiu - I cannot imagine today what emotions I will feel, I only know that the time has come to reconnect this thread that has never broken in my heart!"

Thanks to the bond and the great collaboration with the Italian Union and with the Institutions of the City of Rovinj, including the Ecomuseum of Batana, it will be possible for Giulio to rediscover those flavors and sensations that tie him to his childhood.

The long journey of the Klizia , which will be told in a documentary that will be filmed during the trip, will therefore end in Trieste on the occasion of the Barcolana , a sea festival that seems to be the best example of aggregation and integration of thousands of crews from all over the world who, united by the same sea, have met, for almost sixty years now, for a Sea Festival, in which this year Fertilia will also participate, on board the Klizia.