Guglielmo Marconi was already famous when he arrived in Bari in 1904. In December 1901, he had managed to establish radio communication across the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, it was a matter of covering the Adriatic.

Indeed, upon his arrival, two waves of crowds accompanied the convoys carrying him, his secretary, Cavalier Petruzzelli, Marquess Romanazzi, and the telegraph inspector. 

No one overlooked the economic and symbolic impact of that experiment; the Municipality of Bari had issued a manifesto urging citizens "to welcome with the enthusiasm that the greatest scientist of the century deserves." At the lighthouse, during the ceremony, the crowd had gathered to see the great inventor.

The radiotelegraph stations consisted of two towers with wooden structures, each about 50 meters high and always 50 meters apart. An electrically insulated metal cable was stretched between their respective tops. A conducting wire connected the equipment.

Marcóni personally conducted technical checks and then left Bari to conduct a similar inspection on the other side of the Adriatic, in Bar. He didn't manage to return in time for August 3, 1904, when the first international radio-telegraph station of the Italian network officially began operating. However, he was in Bari the next day, and another enthusiastic crowd accompanied him to the Petruzzèlli opera house to attend a special performance of "Otello."

At that moment, Bari was truly the center of Italy. The radio promised peace and the possibility of looking confidently towards the horizon of the sea. Marconi’s presence at the San Cataldo Lighthouse marked a moment of growth for the young Italian national project and testified to a general confidence in "new technologies" as a key to prosperity and progress.