More than eleven thousand kilometers separate Lanús, one of the main urban centers near Buenos Aires, famous for being the birthplace of footballer Diego Armando Maradona, from Duronia, a small village in Molise, in the province of Campobasso, which today has just 400 inhabitants. Two distant and different places, yet connected by the thread of stories of Italians who emigrated from their hometowns in search of work and opportunities in South America. Among them was the grandfather of Andrea Grieco, an Argentinian woman from Lanús but of Italian descent, who this year fulfilled her dream of visiting the town where her ancestors were born and raised before deciding to leave in the last century, seeking fortune in Argentina.

With the help of the Italea Molise network, Andrea, who is deaf, managed to find the house where her grandfather and father lived before emigrating. It was an incredibly emotional moment for Andrea, visiting Italy for the first time: «I love that you are accompanying me in this search for my roots. It is an overwhelming emotion for me.» These are Andrea’s words, who in Duronia not only found the places of her origins. The greatest emotion was, in fact, meeting her relatives for the first time.

In the medieval alleys of the small Molise village, Andrea was able to embrace her distant relatives for the first time, find similarities, and hear stories from those who shared a part of life with her father and grandfather before they decided to leave. In addition to the on-site research, the Italea Molise team also provided support in translating from Spanish to Italian and vice versa, to help Andrea and her relatives communicate and share stories about their family history. This is the essence of roots tourism: it is not just a simple journey to discover villages often overlooked by mass tourism, but places rich in charm and history. It is much more than that; it is a journey home.