Italy uses its 95-year-old tall ship to promote the nation. Poland has Dar Młodzieży and a quarrel over a quay

Amerigo Vespucci entered Venice today. The Italian Navy's sail training ship, launched in 1931, moored at Riva di San Biasio opposite the Naval History Museum and is open to visitors until Sunday. She is back from North America, where since May she called at Baltimore, New York, Boston, Quebec and Montreal as part of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States, and in a week she will close the campaign in Trieste at the Barcolana regatta, with 2,000 yachts in the bay and an exhibition village on the quay.

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02 october 2026   |   13:18   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Marina Militare

In the same week Poland is arguing over whether Dar Młodzieży, half a century younger, should stand in Gdynia or Szczecin after she retires, and who will pay to keep her as a museum. The Italians do not ask that question. They ask another: how much an old tall ship can still do for the country before she is stopped.

The ministry's estimate: three billion euros of effect from one voyage

Between 2023 and 2025 Vespucci sailed around the world: two years at sea, almost 50,000 nautical miles, five continents, dozens of ports. In each of them "Villaggio Italia" stood beside the ship, an exhibition village in which Italian companies, regions and ministries showed what they had to sell, from yachts and fashion to food and defence technology. Tickets to visit the ship sold out within hours. Defence Minister Guido Crosetto spoke of three billion euros of economic return from the voyage. That is a ministry estimate, not a financial result: such valuations combine the advertising equivalent of port visits with the effects reported by companies present in the village, and nobody audits them. The ship herself costs money rather than making it; the difference is that the Italians count what they get in return.

On her return Vespucci spent ten months in refit at the La Spezia arsenal and on 9 May this year left Genoa on the next campaign. She did not stop being a training ship: 180 first-year cadets of the Naval Academy in Livorno embarked in Baltimore and disembarked in Taranto. Training and promotion happen on the same deck, on the same voyage.

The company that sells a tall ship

The key to this model is not the ship but who manages her. The tour is run by Difesa Servizi, a company owned by the Italian defence ministry whose job is the commercial use of the ministry's assets: brand, image, infrastructure. It sells partners space in Villaggio Italia, licenses the Vespucci brand, organises events in ports and settles accounts with the ministry. The navy provides the ship and the crew, the company turns them into a product, and the state receives promotion it could not buy at that price from any agency.

Venice shows how it works day to day. The ship's visit coincides with the Trans-Regional Seapower Symposium, a forum of navy chiefs from dozens of countries meeting on 6 and 7 October in the Venetian Arsenal. Admirals arrive for a conference, and on the quay stands the ship that is the host's calling card. Then Trieste, the Barcolana, the world's largest regatta, the finish of the Nastro Rosa race from Genoa and once more a village on the quay. Along the way Ravenna, this year's Italian Capital of the Sea, because the title too is part of the same machine.

What Poland has and what it lacks

Dar Młodzieży, built at the Gdańsk Shipyard in 1982, belongs to the Gdynia Maritime University and is one of the most beautiful tall ships in the world. She has circled the globe several times; in 2018, on the Independence Voyage, she visited 22 ports and crowds met her everywhere. She has a crew, cadets and a brand that does not need building.

What she does not have is anything that corresponds to Difesa Servizi. Her voyages are funded by the university from an infrastructure ministry grant, and every major voyage is a separate project for which money has to be found. There is no exhibition village sailing behind her, no permanent industry partner, no company turning port calls into contracts. When a Port of Gdańsk delegation flew to New York last week for the Business Mixer, the ship that could have stood at the pier with Polish companies on deck was in Gdynia.

The Italian model has a second element Poland lacks: continuity. After every campaign Vespucci goes into refit and comes back for the next one. Ten months in La Spezia did not provoke a debate over whether a 95-year-old ship was still worth repairing. She is, because she works for the state and someone counts what that is worth.

The question to ask before the question of the address

The dispute over where Dar Młodzieży should stand assumes that a tall ship's future is a museum. The Italians show that a ship of an age Dar will reach only in fifty years can be the most effective instrument of national promotion a state possesses, provided someone treats her as an instrument rather than a monument.

The question for the infrastructure ministry, the university and both cities is therefore not "Gdynia or Szczecin" but: who in Poland is responsible for making Dar Młodzieży work for the country, and who counts what it brings. As long as the answer is "nobody", every decision about a quay will be a decision about costs alone. The Italians answered it a decade ago by setting up a company. Today their ship stands in Venice, and Sunday's tickets are sold out.

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Amerigo Vespucci Dar Młodzieży żaglowiec Difesa Servizi Villaggio Italia Wenecja

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