A 3740 kilometre long walk.
A 120-days journey.
Two dreams to come true.
Home
The Journey
The goals - Settentrionale Sicula
The goals - Aitna
Who I am
Partners
A 3740 kilometre long walk.
A 120-days journey.
Two dreams to come true.
Home
The Journey
The goals - Settentrionale Sicula
The goals - Aitna
Who I am
Partners
There is a difference, infinitesimal yet decisive, between returning and going back. Because to go back is a unicum, something that happens, conceptually, only once. While returning is a continuous, constant repetition of a journey to a place, to a location, always the same: returning, again, to where you have already returned so many times. The decision to undertake this journey is immersed in the radical sublimation of the very idea of returning. Anyone born in Sicily, at a certain point in their life, finds themselves faced with an inevitable dilemma: stay or leave. Many decide to leave. Often, however, it is not a real choice, but an inevitability, dictated by the lack of opportunities. It is a dynamic that repeats itself cyclically, that of economic migration, and which is certainly not typical of Sicily alone: leaving, in search of a better future, of more solid economic prospects, in the hope of being able to cultivate one's ambitions, one's talent, or of simply afford to live in a more serene, more just, context, compared to the one in which one was born and raised: this is a status that millions of people across the planet share. It is a phenomenon, that of leaving, which in the case of Sicily takes on very peculiar specificities. If on the one hand, in fact, Sicily is a wonderful place, one of the most extraordinary islands in the Mediterranean, with an immense historical, cultural, natural heritage, on the other hand it is also a place that is still socially and economically backward, in which profound clientelistic and nepotistic practices persist, where conflicts of interest, the system of recommendations, patriarchy, still have a decisive value in the overall balance of the community organization. The human, civil and social fabric of Sicily, in short, is complex and full of contradictions. This 3,740-kilometer journey was born with a very clear goal: to support, through two crowdfunding campaigns, two important projects: the growth of the creative hub Settentrionale Sicula and the birth of Aitna, a social impact start-up that will produce solidarity socks: I explain about it, more in detail in the paragraphs of this page dedicated to the Goals. Above all, through this journey, through these two projects, I will return home, to my island, more than twenty years after leaving, to try to build a small piece of change, to support, with energy and will, all those positive realities, all those extraordinary people, who have never left Sicily, or who have already returned, and who despite everything and everyone, have decided to commit themselves to their land, for their land. This journey, in short, is not only a personal challenge, but also an act of resistance, a moment in which to crystallize a concept: the construction of change passes through concrete actions. Walking, today, may seem an anachronistic gesture, yet it is the most natural, most essential, most authentic act to reconnect with the world and with oneself. And it is also a way to slow down, to observe, to listen: to give value not only to the destination, but also and above all to the journey. One step at a time.
Total distance: 3.740 km
Estimated duration: 98 days of walking
Departure: May 14, 2025
Arrival: September 5, 2025
Main stages: Porto, Santiago de Compostela, Burgos, Pirenei, Toulouse, Aix en Provence, Genova, Siena, Roma, Napoli, Cosenza, Stretto di Messina,
Milazzo
Average daily walking: 38 km per day
Rest days: 6
View the route
I chose to begin my journey from Porto, Portugal, to give a dimension of great concreteness to the idea of return. Porto, in fact, is one of the places where, for some years now, I have spent the most time, a city that has welcomed me, in every way, like a second home. Milazzo, the point of arrival, is instead a melting pot of emotional and family stories. For me, a Sicilian from Messina, Milazzo has become, over the time, the point of connection that holds together personal and professional experiences: the trait that unites all the things of yesterday, today and tomorrow.The challenges of a journey like this are enormous: the distance, the physical and mental resistance, the management of daily fatigue and the adaptation to ever-changing conditions. Walking means facing the limit every day and overcoming it, with the awareness that every step is a step towards a greater goal.
1. Settentrionale Sicula: a creative hub for Sicily
Settentrionale Sicula is a cultural project that ranges across different levels of experimentation: a creative-social hub that works both as a small independent publishing house and by organizing events, promoting cultural initiatives, working in the field of communication and social promotion in Sicily. In short, it is an action that aims to give voice to stories that would otherwise remain submerged and that focuses above all on the themes of feminism, climate change, culture, migration, human and civil rights. In the first two years of work we focused on the publication of a book, "Le Siciliane - Almanacco Illustrato per Giovani Sognatrici", in which we told the stories of fifty extraordinary Sicilian women. It was an entirely independent project, financed by the contribution of a private company (Tramontana Engineering), distributed in over sixty bookstores throughout Italy, illustrated by more than thirty illustrators from all over the world, written by the editorial staff of Settentrionale Sicula and of which we have already sold over 1000 copies. With the proceeds from the book, in September 2025, we will launch scholarships for young Sicilian girls, financing one to five study or training projects. Le Siciliane was just the beginning, a splendid beginning, but the Settentrionale Sicula project wants to continue to grow in different directions.
• Books and publications – An independent editorial publisher that tells the story of Sicily and its transformations. There are already a series of projects in the structuring phase, to be developed. Among these, an illustrated guide to the Aeolian Islands; an illustrated volume that will explore the origins of life with references to the Sicilian natural heritage; an illustrated history of Lampedusa and the migrants of Lampedusa; a guide to the Sicilian lighthouses.
• Podcasts and video series – A series of new narrative formats to reach a wider audience and diversify the methods of editorial communication. Here too, there are already some ideas in the pipeline, such as a podcast that tells the story of the Messina earthquake; a video series that, partly taking up the concept of the book Le Siciliane, describes the island from the point of view of women.
• Festivals and social promotion – The creation of meeting and exchange spaces that go in the direction of the programmatic focuses of our project. Among these, the organization of a journalism festival; a feminism festival; a literary competition dedicated to the surreal genre.
Sicily needs authentic narratives, capable of challenging stereotypes and rewriting the imagination. Settentrionale Sicula wants to be a concrete response to the crisis of local publishing and growing misinformation. My journey from Porto to Milazzo will help raise funds to make all this a reality.
Aitna will be much more than a socks brand: it is in fact a 360-degree social inclusion and sustainability project. We will start with the production of socks, but the intention, in the medium term, is to create a brand that over time will specialize in the production of clothing and accessories for outdoor adventures: from hiking to trekking, to mountaineering, with a space also for a casual collection .The company will be established in Sicily, with the aim of creating a sustainable production model and will have four different levels of "positive business":
• Doing business in an economically depressed region
• Employing women, men over 50, migrants, and socially disadvantaged groups
• Using only eco-sustainable materials
• Donating 1 pair of socks out of every 3 sold to organizations that work with migrants and people in difficulty and allocating up to 5% of annual revenues to solidarity projects
Aitna is a project that combines adventures, relationships, vicissitudes, conversations, from two worlds and two moments. On one hand, there are dreams, intentions and resolutions of a group of old Sicilian friends who, since late adolescence, have been discussing how to change their island for the better, at least a little. On the other, there are the reflections, long walks, feelings and unexpected emotions, experienced in 2020, in the midst of Covid, during a period spent in the United States, participating in the Yale World Fellows program. From these two experiences, from these two planets, come the ideas, the people, behind the Aitna project, a company that we imagined with the intention of building a model in which profit, growth, social impact, and solidarity can coexist.
Freelance reporter, war correspondent, documentary filmmaker, for over twenty years, in my work I have always focused on human rights and freedoms, striving to pursue, through my
reportages, dignity and respect for all cultures and religions, promoting the growth of an open society. I began my journalistic career as an editorial journalist in Italy and then moved to South America, specifically Argentina, where I lived between 2008 and 2011. From there I then moved to Tunis, a base from which I covered the Arab Spring uprisings, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. From 2013 to 2019 I lived in Berlin, Germany. My reportage and analyses have appeared, among others, in The Guardian, Die Zeit, Newlines Magazine, Courrier International, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Avvenire, Expresso, Aspenia. In my works I deal mainly with refugees, migration, human rights, climate change, EU foreign policy, civil movements, feminism. In 2022 I founded the creative hub Settentrionale Sicula, a cross-media project born to strengthen independent publishing in Sicily and for which I edited the children book for Le Siciliane. In 2020 I was selected by Yale University, in the United States, for the World Fellows program.