There have been a couple of articles recently in the national press about this area and mentioning that barganews was the first online news site in Tuscany back in 1996.
Just out of interest today we went back through the archives to have a look and remind ourselves just what the internet and Barga was like in 1996.
There was a small problem in that the site under its present name “barganews.com” didn’t actually come into existence until 1999.
For the three years before that it was actually on the CNR – Council for National Research – servers in Milano, and was an experimental art site known at ARTCOMBER.
ARTCOMBER is a gallery space on the internet open to artists irrespective of their working methods or medium…. writers, poets, painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians are all invited to exhibit their work on the site. It is an attempt to circumnavigate the usual gallery system and to make good use of the possibilities that the net can provide. ARTCOMBER should be seen as “work in progress” so bookmark now and call back often to see how some of the site-specific work (and yes, the pun was intended) is progressing. – ARTCOMBER 1996
There was an insert on the site showing stories and people from Barga. There was enormous interest shown around the world for what was happening in Barga and so the site was moved over to servers in the USA and barganews.com then came into existence.
Over the last 17 or 18 years the site has changed graphically many times over, has moved from servers in the USA over to London and then recently back to North America in Canada but one thing has remained absolutely unchangeable – the desire to put Barga firmly on the map.