To get there, to cross continents, rivers and mountains, to walk for miles on the roof of the world, and then clash with the bitter truth: the doors of the Throne of God were closed to foreigners. To all foreigners. Giuseppe Tucci kicked off an icy stone that rolled to the feet of a blade, standing motionless a few meters from him; he knew that Lhasa was known everywhere to be the forbidden city , yet Heinrich Harrer two years ago- who at the time was not anyone, but in the future would become the idol of the masses thanks to the film Seven Years in Tibet taken from his book – had managed to penetrate with his friend Peter Aufschnaiter and just then, while he tried every possible way to convince the monks to be welcomed by the Dalai Lama, was inside those enchanted walls with the important role of translator of news from abroad. Giuseppe looked up at the immense palace that overlooked a steep cliff and sighed: he would not return home without first having access to the most secret place on the planet.
It was June 5, 1894 when a child with curious eyes and hands always ready to grasp what he met on his path was born in a comfortable apartment in Macerata. Today the plaque that recalls his person is in Corso Cavour and is easily visible, however, many people have memories of a teenager in Via Crispi original, not accustomed to making friends, always immersed in readings and walks in the historic ruins, which had attracted attention to itself because often, during the cold winter in the Marche region, he went out on the balcony naked and tried his hand in very difficult yoga exercises. Nobody could have imagined that the city of Macerata would have arrived in the not too distant future to dedicate even a street and an educational center to Palazzo Ugolini. Giuseppe Tucci,
the only child of a couple from Puglia who emigrated to the Marche, was for all the unusual boy who at the Liceo Classico Leopardi produced writings and essays unthinkable for a sixteen year old (so much so that the school still keeps the report card and diploma, together with a booklet made by the pupils a few years ago); it was the solitary rebel who disappeared for whole afternoons in the Municipal Mozzi Borgetti Library or in the State Library trying to decipher incomprehensible languages like Sanskrit, Chinese, Hindi and many others, certainly not being able to foresee that one day among those same walls would have been preserved almost all of its 360 publications; finally, it was the young explorer who devoted hours and hours of study to the archaeological areas ofUrbs Salvia and Helvia Recina . Those hills, those excavations for him so fascinating, that call of the land of origin that drove him to plunge into the past through every modality would never have left him, not even when he died at the age of ninety in his home in San Polo dei Cavalieri. However, Macerata was only the beginning of a very long life spent traveling; a life that led him to the extreme places of the East, where no one had ever been before.
