Grande Cretto di Gibellina: the memory of the tragedy as a builder of a new territory

Abstract

In 1968 the earth shook in western Sicily. The Belize Valley suffered an earthquake that devastated an important group cities. Nature had virulently changed the destiny of this place in the central Mediterranean. In the months following the event, the debate was raised on how to rebuild those cities most affected: in their own implantation or displaced. One of these towns was Gibellina, which was reborn at a distance close to 20 km from the hills it had occupied. Its mayor, Ludovico Corrao, promoted a reconstruction plan where architecture and visual arts served as a framework to define a new identity with which its inhabitants would recognize themselves. All the works, for this purpose, were located in Gibellina Nuova, but the largest of them, the Grande Cretto, by Alberto Burri, rose directly over the remains of the crumbling city. This intervention sought to be the memorial of the lived drama. It is a project imposed on the landscape that has become a governing landmark of the territory. We are facing a piece that, additionally, supports a set of conflicts, of a different entity, due to its new condition of cultural platform and icon of advertising claim, detached from its painful genesis.