Aldo Patruno

Aldo Patruno is Director-General of the Department of Tourism, Cultural Economy and Regional Development for the Puglia Region.

After graduating in Law in Bari, he began working as a strategic consultant to local authorities. Since 2007, he has been a senior manager at the State Property Agency, where, within the General Directorate, he gained significant experience in urban and regional regeneration and enhancement, developing major projects for the reuse and monetisation of disused state-owned property, such as ‘Valore Paese Dimore’, ‘Valore Fari’ and ‘Valore Cammini’.

In 2016, after completing a Master’s degree in Public Administration Management at SDA Bocconi, he joined the Puglia Regional Government as head of the new department responsible for both culture and tourism. He focused primarily on medium- to long-term strategic planning in both sectors, implementing a series of ongoing initiatives aimed at testing the strategy’s effectiveness, including to enable more targeted action on reforming the regional regulatory framework and improving the quality of spending from European Structural Funds: SMART-inPuglia for the enhancement/creation of Community Libraries, Access Laboratories, Theatres, and Creativity Hubs; the three-year planning and funding of investments in culture and entertainment; the establishment of an integrated and coordinated network of information points; support for low-cost flights to increase inbound tourism via Bari and Brindisi airports; the establishment of an integrated network of historical, religious and thematic ‘routes’, starting with the Via Appia and the Via Francigena.