"Regeneration is made through beauty and knowledge”, says Antonio Presti, Sicilian artist and arts patron, who has donated all his personal patrimony in the name of knowledge. Presti, President of the Fondazione Fiumara d'Arte, was one of the speakers at the Itacà Festival , the first festival in Italy on responsible tourism, where his experience has been chosen for a conference on the role of public art as a means of regeneration for a new idea of tourism.“My story is a 40-year-life-long story, started in Sicily, in the province of Messina, in the area of Tusa, that includes 12 local councils”, begins Antonio Presti. In the 1980s, instead of succumbing to mafia power, Presti decides to donate the huge patrimony inherited from his father, a public works contractor, to carry out artistic projects with social aims.

“Tourism wasn't the final aim, it came later”.
“At first my aim was to create a great open-air museum containing monumental sculptures and in collaboration with the greatest contemporary artists in the world, in the name of an aestethic form connected to an ethical form”, explains Presti.
But the story of the Fiumara d'Arte is a story of indifference, opposition and isolation by the institutions, that lasted for 25 years.
As opposed to mafia power that has made all the territory die, the only existing politics which gives back identity, not a touristic one, but an identity of aesthetic and ethical stronghold is the Fiumara d'Arte. It is a political victory of art as opposed to the power of mafia.
Whereas beauty generates beauty and delivers future”. The open-air museum of the Fiumara d'Arte has become an international destination. “Art creates identity, does politics and creates a destination in the world”.

At Castel di Tusa Presti has created a unique hotel-museum, the Art Hotel Atelier,overlooking the sea, with rooms decorated by great international artists, rooms that are real masterpieces of contemporary art.
You live art at the hotel: in the room the work of art fully achieves its purpose only in the presence of the guest who becomes the completing part of the work. The experience in the hotel is an emotional path, from which knowledge then emerges. “The Art Hotel Atelier, as the Fiumara d'Arte, is a metaphysical place where contemporary time creates a new language”.

What is the role of art today? Today the aim of public art is not to make a sculpture or a big museum, but to convey a thought, that comes alive, and transforms a place into a cultural stronghold. We live in an era without memory, and therefore it is important to do something that has a soul, that lasts over time. It is important to create identity. Art has to get rid of its self-reference and has to go through the whole city and outskirts. What matters is to open an ethical, civil, political path of knowledge, to give back a political vision. Public art must be shared. There must be a delivery of knowledge to new generations: we have to educate children, involving them in regenerating beauty”.

Education in the artistic process for Presti is “a sowing of beauty". This way you do the politics of beauty, as opposed to the politics of submission and ignorance of the institutions. "Therefore I speak about “political” tourism, not only “responsible” tourism, because creating ethical and civil thought and a path of knowledge opposes the politics of power and mediocrity”, says Presti.
Young people are the soul of the transformation that Presti has been developing for the last 20 years in Librino, a suburb of Catania, counting 100,000 inhabitants, ignored by the government and by the institutions. Thanks to the politics of beauty, he involves all the community, starting from the children, to give back the right of citizenship and create identity in the inhabitants. Education starts from the children, moving on to the mothers and the entire city, showing that a different way of life is possible. It's the third generation that Antonio Presti has been educating in Librino, giving back beauty from the soul and creating shared art.

As in the Porta della Bellezza (Door of Beauty), a majestic 500 meters long work of art, realised by 2000 children and 2000 mothers of Librino, together with great international artists. Since its creation, in 2009, noboby has touched the door. “In order to transform walls there has to be sharing. The Door of Beauty educates and has pushed young people away from criminality and drug dealing”, explains Presti.

"Librino will become a great contemporary art museum and the prime tourist attraction of the city of Catania", says Presti. Next October the photographic workshops for the children of Librino will start again. It is a big project implemented with the collaboration of Italian and international photographers, in order to set up the international museum of contemporary image and art. A social and anthropological archive with 30,000 shots showing the inhabitants of Librino has been set up. The images will projected on the buildings of the suburb. The Franco-Iranian photographer Reza's photos will also be exhibited. These photos show the inner beauty of the inhabitants, a universal beauty: "When all these 30,000 people see themselves and say: "I am beautiful" they will acquire the right of citizenship and future with a new awareness".