On 26 January 2026, a shutter lowered in the heart of Pietramontecorvino (Foggia) risked definitively extinguishing the social heartbeat of a village of 2,350 inhabitants nestled in the Dauni Mountains. After 138 years of uninterrupted activity, the historic Bar Caffè Basile had turned off the coffee machine and closed its doors, leaving a deafening and apparently unacceptable void in the alleys of the municipality in the province of Foggia.
But the citizens refused resignation and silence. Thanks to the drive and tenacity of the Dalla parte dei Paese association and the fundamental support of the Municipality of Pietramontecorvino, the space will officially reopen on 25 August 2026 in a completely new light, renaming itself with the dialect expression Ce vedame o’ cafè (“See you at the café”).
@On the side of the APS countries
A centenary history born from the intuition of Aniello Basile up to Nicola and Lucia
To understand the symbolic and cultural value of this restart we need to rewind the tape back to 1888, the year in which Aniello Basile inaugurated the very first bar business in the history of the town. Intelligent and far-sighted, Aniello did not limit himself to serving drinks: he traveled to Naples to learn the techniques and secrets of true artisanal ice cream, being the first to import a hitherto unknown delicacy into the Dauni Mountains. In recent decades, Nicola and Lucia have taken up the baton with love and daily dedication, transforming the place into a community institution, a safe haven made of laughter, boiling cups and discussions around the tables.
The “1000 bistrot” model and bottom-up collective management
The reopening of this social garrison will not be a simple commercial operation, but is ideally linked to the experimental 1000 bistrot project, the famous measure created in France to reactivate meeting places in small rural municipalities threatened by isolation. In Pietramontecorvino a bottom-up regeneration experiment comes to life in which the place will become a collective management space. Citizens will find shared furnishings, books to browse, board games for children and the elderly, as well as a busy calendar of cultural micro-activities aimed at stimulating debate and the active participation of citizens.
An antidote against the depopulation and loneliness of small villages
After the inauguration scheduled for August 25th, the first public initiative will be held the following day, August 26th, with a citizen meeting organized by the association to illustrate in detail the guidelines of the route. Ce Vedeme o’ Cafè represents a concrete model to combat the depopulation of internal villages and eradicate the loneliness that often affects small provincial towns. The historic little square animated by the founder Aniello Basile and then looked after by Nicola and Lucia returns to beat, demonstrating how the passion of a united community can transform the closure of a bar into the beginning of a new chapter of social cohesion.
