In January of 1968, two earthquakes, only a day apart, hit 14 towns in the Belice Valley, razing four villages to the ground. Measuring around 6.3 on the Richter scale, the tremors led to the death of 231 people in the valley, injuring more than 1,000 and leaving as many as 100,000 survivors without a roof over their heads.
The four destroyed villages were Gibellina, Salaparuta, Montevago and Poggioreale. People evacuating from the devastation, took shelter in nearby farmers’ barns, but most were too scared to be anywhere but out in the open despite the freezing cold.
Sicily is a hotbed of seismic activity. It seems that you take your life into your hands when you step onto the island. There have been a lot of earthquakes over the years, and when they strike, there’s a lot of damage. And let’s not forget the damage caused by the volcanic eruptions of Mt. Etna.
Sicily’s high seismic activity is due to being located precisely the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collide. This area is a zone of significant geological stress and faulting – where the crust is being pulled apart, causing strain and releasing energy in the form of earthquakes.
The most recent earthquake in Sicily that caused considerable damage was on December 26, 2018, with a magnitude of 4.9. This earthquake, striking just north of Catania left more than 1,100 people homeless.
We had time during our drive between Trapani and Castellmare di Golfo, to get a little off the beaten track and visit the area. It was a chance to move away from the coast and see the more rural side of Sicily, which consists of gently rolling hills dotted with barley fields, olive groves and vineyards. We were perplexed to see that the fields were planted so that the gullies between the rows of plants ran downhill, instead of being able to catch the run-off in the furrows.
Our first stop was Poggioreale, a ghost town surrounded by high fences that sternly and most definitely said “Keep Out”. This is because many of the damaged buildings are on the brink of collapsing at any moment. Some of the buildings are being held together with scaffolding. We weren’t sure if this means there is still hope to rescue some of the buildings or whether it is just about preventing the collapse on some unsuspecting tourists’ heads.
We were torn between respecting that the area might very well be dangerous and the compelling photographic opportunities that were beckoning just ahead. Succumbing to our baser instincts, we ignored the chained gates and the foreboding corpse of a bird stuck to the pillar, and hopped up onto the stone wall to the left of the gates where we were able to slide over to the other side.
Once we stood facing the bleak, crumbling buildings, our curiosity was replaced with a feeling of tremendous sadness. Poggioreale is a place frozen at the exact time of the earthquake. Inside the old school, only partially destroyed, pupils’ chalk scribblings are still on the blackboard. A calendar on the wall marks the year: 1968. There are poignant reminders of the tragedy at every corner. It must be heartbreaking for the people who had to leave almost everything behind as they fled into the freezing snow covered night, not realising that they would never be able to return to their homes.
Poggioreale was originally founded in 1642.
As we ventured up the main street, we saw lovely old buildings that were likely the library and town hall. We cautiously peered inside, and could see the remains of frescoes on walls, broken furniture and crockery and even painted ceilings that might once have held delicate chandeliers
The ruined town occupies a panoramic position overlooking the gently undulating valley below.
You can’t explore too deeply, even if you were bold enough because there are piles of rubble everywhere and Mother Nature is steadily clawing her way back to reclaim the area. We found ourselves imagining what life must have been like here. People enjoying the views from their balconies, chatting to their neighbours in the cobbled streets, gathering in the piazza to have a cup of coffee or heading towards the church with the tolling of the bell on a Sunday. But today, there is only a gentle breeze and silence…
And the stray dogs. Even though they look like a pack of Golden Retrievers, they felt quite menacing and we were glad we were already in the car when we spotted them.
After assessing the damage to the town, the municipality decided that rebuilding anything on the existing site would be impractical and uneconomical due to the severe structural damage, so a new area was proposed a few kilometres down the valley. Architects soon got to work on the construction of the new Poggioreale.
We drove down the hill to investigate.
The bold plan had been to build an entirely new town and relocate the inhabitants. But what looked practical in the planning stage did not really take the people, their lifestyle and the cultural implications into account.
Hundreds of “cement boxes” were built as swiftly as possible, with people being issued the keys to their new abode in their brand new town – known as Poggioreale Nuova. Firstly it was located four kilometres from the now-destroyed original. It was built according to a strange late-60s design aesthetic, including cement buildings with colourful columns and statues inspired by ancient Greece. The heart of it was Piazza Elimo, a square based on an agora and framed by a two-storey colonnade designed by Paolo Portoghesi, also responsible for mosques in Rome and Strasbourg and the royal palace in Amman.
“We were victims of an urban experiment, imposed on us from the top,” said Mayor Lorenzo Pagliaroli.
In theory it would be easy enough to move the people, but it proved harder to transplant centuries of history, habit and tradition. The new design was that of a modern city assuming that people had cars. Poggioreale Nuova lacked the intimate courtyards and narrow alleys where residents of the original Poggioreale would step out of their homes and meet up to pass the time of day.
People reported feeling displaced and many of them made the decision to move abroad.
Poggioreale Nuova was designed to accommodate 10,000 people, but whereas in 1950 it had 3,400 inhabitants, today there are only 1,400.
When we visited there was a bit of activity as some locals attempted the setting up of a street market. Encouraged, we parked and wandered around, only to discover that there goods on offer were not home made crafts and tasty produce. Overall it was just ugly and sad.
The piazza, conceived as an open-air mall, was mostly deserted, even for a Saturday mid-morning. Apparently the homes overlooking it sell for a pittance:
Mayor, Lorenzo Pagliaroli. “Cities cannot be rebuilt in a few years. The old Poggioreale took 300 years to evolve according to the habits of its people. The new Poggioreale was rebuilt in less than 15 years, without taking into account the traditions of its inhabitants. People used to live side by side and the town was full of gathering places. The neighbourhoods in the New Poggioreale were built far from each other. At the time, they didn’t need a car to go downtown or to visit a friend. Now they do.”
On our way to visit Gibellina we drove through the hilltop town of Salaparuta. The town is of Arabic origin, and was established in the 15th century for the Paruta family, who developed the area at the foot of the Medieval Castle. The views from the town would have been incredible for the inhabitants before the disaster ruined their lives.
All Salaparuta’s typical historic buildings and monuments are gone. We stopped to contemplate the ruins of the Medieval Castle and some of the virtually levelled homes and buildings.The local economy revolves around agriculture and a major source of income issue to vineyards scattered throughout the municipality’s territory. The farmers in the area are so skilled in wine production, that they obtained the prestigious label of Salaparuta DOC in 2006.
Gibellina was another town that lost everything after the earthquake.
Dating back to medieval times, life here was centred around agriculture and became home to as many as 100,000 residents though by the 1960’s the population was only 6,000. Most of the families were poor and worked hard for a living. The earthquake was a complete devastation.
The local administration also decided to abandon the site and to rebuild a new city about twenty kilometers away, closer to the main road.
In 1981, Italian visual artist and sculptor Alberto Burri visited the ruins of Gibellina. He learned that the inhabitants continued to go back to wander through the rubble of the destroyed city, to reflect and visit what was once their home. He made a decision that amidst that rubble steeped in pain, he would create a blanket of white concrete to seal and protect the heart of the city. It would follow the exact layout of the old town grid, with the aim of transforming a place of great tragedy into a space of memory. Walking along the “streets” inside Il Grande Cretto, as it is known, one feels the “absence,” deliberately marked by the coldness of the concrete.
Il Grande Cretto has been described as “a magnificent yet brutalist display of protest in the form of a huge wave of cement across the Sicilian mountainside”. The stark contrast with the picturesque countryside forces one to take a second glance at this dramatic artwork. You can’t help but think “what on earth is that?” Which is possibly the aim of Burri’s work.
Beginning in 1984, after gaining approval from locals, Burri set to work on creating the massive concrete memorial. The ‘cracks’ follow the old road system and therefore each of the blocks (around 10-20 metres on each side and 1.6 metres high) represent literal blocks of the old town. The ruins were left in place, even personal possessions, before being covered by tons of cement. A mausoleum for Gibellina.
The project was not completed until 2015 and is now a tourist attraction in the area. We spent a short time at Il Grande Cretto, wandering along the streets that used to see children playing, elderly people exchanging gossip in the sun and business owners hurrying about their day. You can’t help contemplating the extent of the tragedy. The artwork is huge; 8,000 square metres of Sicilian mountainside is covered in white cement. You can walk right up the hillside, up the steep embankment, to what would have been the highest point in town offering a spectacular view across the entire area, across miles of countryside and across to Nouvo Gibellina.
We felt compelled to investigate the new Gibellina, relocated 20km west at a location that already had both road and train access. The idea was to enrich the town and make a centre for modern art and sculpture as well as a Modern Art Museum. Artists from across Italy were invited to create new pieces for the town.
Although Gibellina nuovo is an improvement on Poggioreale nuovo, it is also extremely strange and unwelcoming.
At the entrance to the town is a 70-foot-tall steel sculpture of a five-pointed star by Sicilian sculptor, Pietro Consaara. It is known as the Porta del Belice or the Star of Belice, marking the entrance to the town that hosts one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world and unfortunately also a reputation as “a failed art utopia” as well as “a surreal, postmodern ghost town.”
In an attempt not to try and emulate what had been before, the town was constructed with large apartments and office blocks that are rather bland, there are strange shaped churches, wide and empty avenues, desolate squares with surrealist paintings, and massive sculptures, all assembled by a roster of world-renowned artists and architects.
Similar to Poggioreale nuovo, it is evident that the initial enthusiasm has faded. Weeds have sprouted and most people have left. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweed drifting down the main road. In fact, it was hard to decide which was more depressing to visit. The coldly concrete submerged old town, or the unrealised dream of the new town.
Over the course of 40 years, Gibellina’s population has apparently decreased from 6,000 to 3,500. The garden city envisaged, was designed for 50,000. The original old, medieval town covered about 50 acres, but the new one sprawls across nearly 500.
“The displacement of Gibellina and Poggioreale involved only buildings and streets,” says Maurizio Carta, professor of city planning at the University of Palermo. “But the traditions and lives of its inhabitants have not moved, and remain buried beneath rubble in the old city.’’
