Antonio Maria Vasile began working two years ago to connect the United States directly with Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot where many Italian Americans can trace their heritage.
Mr. Vasile, the head of Puglia’s airports, tried to convince carriers that they should set their sights not on Naples or Sicily but on Bari, arguing that the regional capital offered rich culture, history and cuisine worthy of their time and money.
“We don’t want to be relegated to being the south,” he said, referring to deeply ingrained biases in Italy against the more economically disadvantaged regions south of Rome.
His efforts paid off late last year, when the Italian carrier Neos announced direct flights between Bari and New York’s Kennedy Airport beginning the first week in June, the first ever route linking Puglia to the United States. The seasonal flights will run once a week through October.
Mr. Vasile sees opportunities for all of Puglia, from farmhouse inns to seaside villages, but also for his city of about 330,000 people.
The port city on the Adriatic was once little more than a stopover, a gateway to the resplendent beach towns of southern Puglia or Greece via ferry. Bari was too sleepy and sketchy for most tourists, its old town so dangerous that even residents considered it off-limits.
Puglia’s many charms — a stunning coastline, beautiful architecture, relaxed feel — turned the region into a buzzy destination first. Puglia regulars include Madonna, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep. Lamborghinis await in the rental car garage. Last year, Italy picked Puglia for the Group of 7 summit, hosting dignitaries in the luxury resort of Borgo Egnazia.
Now Bari, with its nine-mile seafront promenade and the tomb of the real St. Nicholas, is beginning to capitalize on the region’s growing appeal, its old days of mob crime mostly behind it.
“This great appeal to tourists has made the people of Bari rediscover a little bit of pride,” Vito Leccese, the mayor, said. “The more tourists come, the more important we feel, because it means our city is well-liked.”
Yet there is also some trepidation among residents that — although Bari is hardly Florence, Rome or Venice — it, too, could be overrun by tourists, or at least profoundly reshaped by them. Does a city that only recently remade its identity now risk losing it?
Rents have surged in the city center as many landlords have turned their properties into short-term rentals. Older people on fixed incomes have had to move further away. So have students of the city’s two universities, who represent the very demographic that local leaders say they want to keep, to help reverse decades of brain drain that have affected all of Italy, though especially the south, as young people seek better jobs elsewhere.
“Bari is seen as a destination you pass through and then leave,” Mery Coppolecchia, a 22-year-old political science student, said as she sat in a bustling central plaza on the university’s urban campus. “And it’s a shame, because if graduates and students don’t stay here, then who does?”
Even if they stay, tourism “is not something stable,” argued Gabriele Tedesco, 21, a law student, noting that many hospitality jobs are seasonal or low paying. “It is not something that can sustain, even in the long term, a city’s economy.”
For tourism to fuel economic development, local governments would also have to invest in public transportation to benefit residents and businesses, said Maria Grazia Cito, an adjunct professor of applied economics and tourism in Bari. It takes her about an hour to drive into the city for work — or three hours on public transit.
“Residents should come first,” she said, or the city could lose its character. (Think Venice, which is charging a fee to day trippers who pack the city’s antiquated streets, crowding out residents.) “It’s like Disneyland. It loses all its authenticity.”
Officials know they have much to do.
“If you want to rent a Ferrari in the airports of Puglia, it is not a problem,” said Mr. Vasile, the airport director. “The problem is finding a bus.”
Bari has come so far that it is easy to be optimistic about its future, said Gianrico Carofiglio, a novelist and former anti-mafia prosecutor. He recalled how he avoided certain neighborhoods in his youth because they were so crime ridden; by the time his own daughter was a teenager, she was safe walking alone most anywhere at night.
“The city was incredibly transformed, from all points of view,” he said. More shops and cafes. More culture, including an annual film festival. More writers like him who set much of their work in Bari or Puglia.
“It was as if something had been uncorked and the city became an interesting place, full of life and opportunities — obviously with many problems still,” added Mr. Carofiglio, who now lives in Rome, crediting several capable administrations, and police officers and prosecutors like himself, for helping to turn around Bari. “But it is a place where people come and are amazed.”
The nightlife has grown so much that it has become a point of contention. When hundreds of young revelers stayed out dancing and singing in the streets near the city center this month during the festival of St. Nicholas, some residents threw buckets of water from their balconies to shoo them away.
Most radically changed is Bari Vecchia, or Old Bari, the historic center, once ruled by criminal clans. Now, walking tours visit two grand churches, the cathedral and the Basilica of St. Nicholas.
Residents and tourists line up outside a hole-in-the-wall bakery for Bari-style focaccia, topped with tomatoes, olives and oregano. And foreigners join the throng of visitors to Arco Basso street, where women sell ear-shaped orecchiette pasta despite accusations that some sell store-bought goods and the periodic crackdowns on local restaurants that buy untraceable pasta.
For now, Mr. Vasile, the airport director, understands that most of Bari’s tourism will be centered on the warmest months — unlike Rome and Venice, which have plenty of visitors all year. Tourism slows so much in Bari’s winter that many of the old city’s souvenir shops were still shut down in this season’s waning days.
Standing near the airport tarmac with a view of the Adriatic during that visitor lull, Mr. Vasile allowed himself to imagine a future in which Bari becomes a year-round destination. The flights from New York, he hopes, could just be the start.
“We have become aware of new possibilities,” he said.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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