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THE STRAIT OF MESSINA IS NOT MERELY A PHYSICAL PLACE, MADE UP OF LANDSCAPES AND ARCHITECTURE. ACCORDING TO PATRIZIA GIANCOTTI, ITS “TRUE DIMENSION” IS THE IMMATERIAL ONE

An anthropological reading of the Strait of Messina reveals its intangible heritage. Europe’s finis terrae, an inner landscape, a geographical singularity: this is how anthropologist and journalist Patrizia Giancotti outlines the elusive profile of a place rich in meaning. It is a place whose protection should extend beyond the beauty of its landscape to include its “volatile assets” – the intangible cultural treasures that are on the verge of disappearing.

Patrizia Giancotti recounts that anthropology has been a passion of hers since her youth, when, as a teenager, she would listen to the stories and songs of an elderly aunt from Calabria sitting by the heart, recording and preserving them in written form.

“Anthropology,” she explains, “is also the study and narration of the intangible and the invisible. It provides a textual anchor for cultural heritage that is fading away, sometimes capturing it at the very moment before it disappears.
It is not mere storytelling: it is research, carried out with scientific rigor, and the systematic organization and interpretation of findings.

Your perspective on the Strait of Messina is quite distintive. Many acknowledge the existence of an important intangible heritage there, yet they often only touch upon the subject, preferring the more concrete dimensions of history and culture. What is the immateriality of the Strait?

I believe that, in order to truly understand the Strait, an anthropological approach focused on intangible culture is essential. We are talking about a place that is remote by definition, overlooking a sea marked by a transition between continents.

It is the finis terrae of Europe.

But is it really the end?
Nothing ends at the Strait.

Stretto di Messina-journal-giancotti- ferrata — During his exile in Brancaleone, Cesare Pavese referred to the single-track railway line that still connects Taranto to Reggio Calabria as “la Ferrata”. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

If one arrives in the right frame of mind – perhaps at sunset, after a journey across the entire length of Italy – what emerges is not a sense of ending, but rather the sight of an explosive and magnificent elsewhere: a mythical horizon, complete with snow-capped smoking volcanoes, suspended above and continually transforming across this stretch of sea. If anything ends at the Strait, we might say, borrowing the words of Fitzcarraldo as he gazes over the Amazon rainforest: “Here reality ends, and visions begin”.

Etna from Bova Marina point. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

By its very nature as both a divider and a connector, the Strait embodies a rite of passage. Between one shore and the other, between the continental mainland and what lies beyond, between one vision of reality and its opposite, one is alternately audience and spectator.
For centuries, this has nourished myth and ignited our imagination. Yet, in many instances, reality surpasses even the myths themselves.

The stories and practices associated with the phenomenon of the Fata Morgana, with oceanic fish, the women who were believed to cut down waterspouts, the She-Wolf, swordfish fishing, the Feast of Saint John bonfires, and the apotropaic tradition of the women of Bagnara Calabra, are also anthropological treasures – living symbolic arsenals, complete with their ritual gestures and practices. They are manifestations of the intangible rooted in the territory: treasures, immaterial extensions, “visions” of the Strait. These elements also serve an important social function: they help stitch together and preserve the bonds between the island and the peninsula.

The She-Wolf, for example, is the name given to the fog that typically forms over the Strait and appears in the sky as an elongated shape, sometimes resembling an animal, causing a dramatic reduction in visibility. From this phenomenon – highly dangerous for navigation and resulting from the Strait’s unique atmospheric and geographical conditions – have emerged stories and legends, traditions, and shared practices found on both shores.

Stretto di Messina-journal-giancotti-07 — The “She-Wolf” on the Ionian coast changes shape while preserving the elongated form of the Strait. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

The Bonfires of Saint John have long served as a means of communication between the two shores, which share an ancient ritual tradition: the simultaneous lighting of bonfires, similar divinatory practices, nursery rhymes, and gestures of good fortune. Together, these customs testify to the deep and complex bond between Sicily and Calabria – one that has also, at times, been marked by conflict.

It should not be forgotten that the Strait is where Italy’s eastern and western coastlines converge. Here, the two seas – the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian – meet, each with distinct temperatures, marine life, currents, and depths. Flows and currents travel thousands of kilometers along the coasts of the peninsula before confronting one another at this very point, erupting into whirlpools and eddies, their power further intensified by the region’s tectonic forces.

All of this has, throughout history, nourished the myths of the Strait, endowing the place with an aura of mystery as well as a distinctive sense of power, magnetism, and energy. In many ways, it lends an uncanny quality to the cities overlooking its waters and shapes the unique character of the people who inhabit these shores.

The ancient rituals shared by the two shores reveal much about the deep and complex relationship between Sicily and Calabria – a bond that has also, at times, been marked by conflict.

These striking contrasts – between cliffs and abysses, wind and sea – give rise to extraordinary landscapes, stretching from depths of one thousand meters above sea level. These mountains emerged from the sea and still preserve its memory, with fossilized seashells scattered along their trails and the skeleton of a whale discovered at an elevation of 800 metres.

Equally remarkable are the vast, stony fiumare – the seasonal riverbeds characteristic of Calabria –with their silent sentinels: ancient remnants of the past, reclaimed by abandonment until they have become part of the landscape itself. From the rocky heights above them, the gaze extends far across the sea.

Beyond the decay and the concrete, there is this as well.

“Disorientation, enchantment, and unease” are, according the anthropologist Vito Teti, the feelings that overwhelm particularly sensitive observers when confronted with the landscape of the fiumara and its abandoned villages. Other travellers, however, may recognize in this dramatic intensification of opposites the contours of their own inexpressible inner landscapes, and feel a profound sense of kinship with them” from *Filoxenia* by Patrizia Giancotti, featuring the author’s photos.

The Strait possesses a boundless frontier-like dimension, one that inspires a visionary and mysterious form of maieutics – a process of revelation and discovery that emerges through contemplation.

In the end, all of this becomes an inner landscape – something one carries within oneself, and from which it is difficult to remain distant.

The Strait’s intangible heritage is not only difficult to uncover, but also challenging to convey. Patrizia Giancotti explores the people who inhabit these landscapes – and who, in many ways, embody them – in her book Filoxenia …

The Strait’s invisibility also extends to its intangible heritage: a fragile, elusive, almost volatile legacy constantly at risk of disappearing. It is an invaluable cultural inheritance that urgently calls for preservation, documentation, and recognition. This is an anthropological imperative. It is the anthropologist’s task to “capture” this heritage before it fades away, using the tools of the discipline: film cameras, audio recorders, photographic equipment, and other means of documenting what is otherwise destined to vanish.

In Filoxenìa, I explored the landscapes of the Greek-Aspromonte hinterland overlooking the Strait, in search of the ancient meaning of hospitality – of the care for the stranger celebrated in Homeric tradition. Filoxenìa, the love of the outsider, stands as the very opposite of the more familiar concept of xenophobia. To pursue this search, I deliberately reversed the usual perspective, following the road signs that point inland, towards the vertical landscape and the ancient heart of Greek Calabria.
At the centre of this photographic narrative – poised between travel reportage and ethnographic research – are the people I encountered along the way: shepherds tuning the bells of their goats, guardians of the Greek language of Calabria, traditional dance masters, women preparing zippuli, scholars of Byzantine culture, musicians, elderly women who preserve ancestral knowledge, and young girls proud to call themselves Calabrian. Together, they become luminous points in an intimate geography overlooking the Strait.

Stretto di Messina-journal- giancotti-01

How can the slow time of invisibility and immateriality be reconciled with the accelerated pace of contemporary life?

During my long anthropological research among the peoples of the Amazon, I came to realize that there are places where it seems both more realistic and more fruitful to bring the ancient and the hypermodern into dialogue, allowing each to enrich the other. This is not about indulging in nostalgia or imagining that the past was somehow better. Our own agro-pastoral past, for instance, was also marked by hardship, injustice, and inequality.

It is up to us to discern what within traditional culture can still be useful and inspiring in improving our lives, in light of today’s renewed awareness, and what is better left buried once and for all.

Can the safeguarding of such a singular experience find a home in museums?

To cease being mere repositories of dusty, dying objects – condemned to the loss of their social function – the museum must learn to tell the story of a community. Indeed, it must become a tool for community cohesion, a device through which the community itself recognizes and expresses itself: a living, articulate, and active form of memory, where objects, when present, are allowed to become spokespersons.

A museum must know how to communicate, involve, and move people, engaging new generationms to the point of making them active participants in the narrative. It must also be capable of using new technologies, but only insofar as they serve this purpose with humility and precision.

Certain values – our relationship with nature, seasonality, knowledge of the land and its plants, and above all the sense of community – are precious resources for improving contemporary life. They strengthen awareness and a sense of humanity, giving value to shared existence, to the feeling of being active, living, and even transformative agents within our surroundings.

In the Strait, I imagine a “narrating museum”: a weaving of faces and voices, of images and speaking objects, of Sirens, the Fata Morgana mirage, and women who “cut” waterspouts; stories of fishing and crossings, ritual specialists, songs, testimonies, living communities. An anthropological task force of students engaged in research and recovery of what is being lost; a fluid, evolving, immersive and open experience; a collecting device for those who wish to take part. Its aim would be not only to give value to all this, but also to capture, entangle, and draw the visitor into the “vision” of the invisible.

Opening: The shadow of Patrizia Giancotti on the Amendolea River, from the book Filoxenìa. Photo by the author.

Patrizia Giancotti, born in Turin to Calabrian parents, is an anthropologist, photographer, and writer. She teaches anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Reggio Calabria. She is also an author and broadcaster for Rai Radio 3, and has published more than one hundred reportage pieces in major magazines, as well as produced over fifty photographic exhibitions in Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Africa, and Brazil. She has conducted visual anthropology research in Italy and abroad, particularly in Brazil, where she lived for over ten years, receiveng the high honour of the Order off the Southern Cross (Cruzeiro do Sul) for cultural merit. In Southern Italy she has carried out visual anthropology fieldwork taht has resulted in photo-filmic and musical works. For the GAL of the Greek-Calabrian area, she conducted visual anthropology research that resulted in the book Filoxenìa – L’accoglienza tra i Greci di Calabria (Rubbettino Editore), winner of the Ali sul Mediterraneo Prize 2017, as well as in the radio documentary series for Radio3 Volti e voci della Calabria Greca. Among her travelling lecture-performances are Filoxenìa e altre storie di Calabria and Dal Mediterraneo al Brasile sulla rotta delle Sirene, presented, among other venues, at the Arena dello Stretto. For the past four years, she has been living in a small village in Calabria.

WHAT IS BEAUTY FOR THE STRAIT OF MESSINA, WELL EXPLAINED BY ANNA MALLAMO

Messina is a painful city. So painful that it is hard to perceive its beauty. In Reggio, the new promenade with Tresoldi’s work, a sign of urban growth and hope, is confronted with rubbish abandoned at the corners of the streets.

With Anna Mallamo, journalist for Gazzetta del Sud, we discuss one-sided visions that corner the Strait, but also a future made possible by its Beauty.

The Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza launched a call titled “Comunicare Bellezza”, a support program for cultural and territorial projects throughout Italy – a way of putting into practice a value that has historically been appreciated through its artistic, environmental, and cultural expressions, yet which does not traditionally belong to the sphere of primary individual and social needs.

Around the word “beauty”, a language dense with prefabricated layers and meanings is often used.

Beauty lies in tourism, in history, in landscape, in design, in science and technology, in manufacturing and food. In books, poetry, and photography. In men, women, boys and girls, animals, and plants.

Almost always, it is beauty as an adjective – a visual or intellectual attribute assigned to a defined subject.

Anna Mallamo during the talk in Messina, Invisible Mediterranean(s) 2021, Journey across the Strait IV. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Anna Mallamo, journalist for Gazzetta del Sud, Reggio-born, Messina by adoption, and a citizen of the Strait by passion, believes that beauty is as necessary as food, water, and air – essentially as necessary as the things that keep us alive. Anna argues this starting from the effects produced by its opposite: desolation, decay, and abandonment.

She says, “Landscape is a determinant of the soul”, and it almost seems an inevitable statement when speaking about the lands of Scylla and Charybdis. “I find myself fighting every day against the oblivion that pervades those who live in the Strait and causes a progressive and selective blindness: decay prevails, people avert their gaze from the landscape, and thus they lose their soul.

And from that moment on, you are only able to see and describe what is ugly, and within that narrative there is a kind of complacency in pain and tragedy that leads to inaction.

The perspective closes in: the Strait becomes a territory either to abandon or simply to endure.”

Anna Mallamo with Alfonso Femia and other participants during the talk session in Messina, Invisible Mediterranean(s) 2021, Journey across the Strait IV. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Future and the Strait: how can a connection be created between time and place, a connection that seems to be missing?

The only apparent solution seems to be the bridge that people have dreamed about since the mid-twentieth century, never built – and this alone has become a good reason for complaint. In recent decades, the bridge itself has become “the meaning”, in a desperate search for a collective signifier, the only possible form of redemption.

It is clear that many other forms of emancipation exist: the seafront promenade of Reggio Calabria, with Tresoldi’s installation, is one example, because the people of Reggio – not only tourists – appreciate it and make it part of their lives, supporting local businesses and generating wealth and employment. Even so, just around the corner there are piles of uncollected rubbish, and when you turn your back to the sea, the curtain of buildings you see becomes a fabric of unravelled signs with which you must contend every day.

In the past, Messina was a great city. At the time of the 1908 earthquake, it was the third largest port in the Mediterranean. I do not intend here to provide a condensed history, but, for example, before 1908, there was a 9-kilometre-long seafront known as the Palazzata – a continuous sequence of buildings constructed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, better known as the Teatro Marino, which housed a range of functions: residences, silos, and warehouses.

An avant-garde architectural vision, which replaced an earlier Palazzata of much older origin, damaged by the 1783 earthquake.

At the end of the 18th century, it was decided to rebuild the Palazzata and, more broadly, the entire city preserving its previous layout and appearance. However, after 1908, different choices were made.

The Palazzata by Simone Gullì before the earthquake of 1783, painting by Louis François Cassas ( wikipedia).

Palazzata and Neptune’s statue before the earthquake of 1908.

Palazzata after the earthquake in 1908. (wikipedia).

Palazzata of Messina, project by Giuseppe Samonà (wikipedia).

It is a decades-long, almost century-long lack of vision on the part of Messina’s administration. Twenty years ago, for instance, the tram line was built alone the seafront, despite the existence of a less invasive route that had already been identified. It was a short-sighted decision, especially considering that in recent decades coastal cities have worked to remove barriers between the city and the sea. Reggio and its promenade, geographically close, are a clear example of this. The tram on the seafront has further diminished an already struggling Messina

Messina’s past is its landscape: hills flattened, hills rebuilt.

The people of Messina move between the memory of the past and what the gaze itself generates – two forms of memory that produce a permanent sense of uprooting.

Before 1908, there was a saying in Messina used to describe a highly negative situation: “to do more damage than 5 February” (the day of the 1783 earthquake). This is not only a reference to popular culture; it almost represents an anthropological evidence of how the “damage” suffered offered the people of Messina a pretext not to fight back, an alibi not to react, turning inaction into a way of life. With the second earthquake, even more so, identity was lost in the collapse, and there is no desire to recover it.

What has been built – the geometry, the heights, the materials of the buildings – acts on people’s perceptual sensitivity, generating daily feelings of either positivity or discomfort. One is subjected to, and gradually becomes accustomed to, the most disturbing elements, to visual dissonances, and to the lack of connections between the fragments of the city, the greenery, and the sea.

This happened in Messina.

How does it work for those who stay?

“Restanza” – a word effective both in sound and meaning – is a complicated and risky choice.

Vittorio Teti – an anthropologist – speaks of the “adventure of staying” (in the South, editor’s note): “the effort, the harshness, the beauty, the ethics of ‘restanza’ are no less decisive and foundational than the adventure of traveling. The two adventures are complementary and must be understood and narrated together.”

The risk is one of habituation and diminishing vision, eventually leading to complete blindness.

Creating a cultural condition that compels “the people of the Strait” to look at the Strait – to know it and to recognize it – means designing a radical cultural intervention, one that activates a continuous rather than episodic process of revitalization, ultimately capable of bringing about lasting change.

The abiility to perceive the beauty of the Strait, of Messina, and of Reggio must be constantly encouraged, for it has long been stifled not only by its opposite – the accumulated ugliness of the landscape – but even more so by inaction.

The makers of beauty – writers, artists, architects – seek to jolt their fellow citizens into readjusting their gaze, revealing the immaterial to those who observe from afar, captivated by legends yet fearful of disappointment.

This is what Nadia Terranova has done in her novel Farewell, Ghosts and in the graphic novelCaravaggio e la ragazza (created with Lelio Bonaccorso), featuring beautiful illustrations of Messina.

Isabella on the balcony (from the graphic novel Caravaggio e la ragazza by Nadia Terranova and Lelio Bonaccorso. Illustration by Lelio Bonaccorso)

Retruning to the starting point of this reflection and to the question – how it works for those who stay – the need for beauty must find a synthesis with the economy.

Architecture is, potentially, one of the elements of balance and reconciliation: it introduces new layers and integrates the functions of everyday life into urban contexts of good formal quality, in a continuous dialogue with the built heritage of the past and with the natural environment.

From a naturalistic perspective, the Strait is a goldmine to be monetized, ideally not (only) through a “milk-the-tourism” approach, assigning a handful of square meters of coastline to sun-and sea-hungry tourists, in a B-movie-style model.

This is not what the people of the Strait need. There are alternative approaches that can be developed for a form of tourism in which the beach is a pause, not the goal: for example, territorial itineraries, routes tracing the residencies of artists, nature excursions, and so on.

This hidden beauty, which already exists, has become invisible because it has been diminished by other choices that the Strait – Messina, but also Reggio – has inflicted upon itself.

What emerges is illegal building activity and a monstrous ugliness. Even everyday living has taken on a diminished, impoverished dimension. Pervasive speculation has generated a sense of possession without beauty.

Fortunately, there are many projects underway …

Some things have been done, but many others have been left unfinished or interrupted. There are still miles of coastline to be restored. What is lacking is a political and economic vision. When a local administration is focused on defending itself, it does not invest in major works, but in reassuring the electorate in the short term.

Work is lacking; work is a priority.

It must be so.

But “work” is not an isolated category. It is the design and planning across different sectors that generates work. The people of the Strait have a short-sighted obsession with the “bridge” as a generator of employment for years to come, even before considering it as a means of connection.

Without taking into account that today, within a framework of ecological transition, this would perhaps be a choice that depletes the territories.

The construction of the bridge would increase both heavy and light vehicle traffic, a vision anchored in the past, whereas the guidelines of the European Green Deal require a reduction in road transport.

There is a lack of cultural elaboration around any vision of the future, which as a consequence fades further and further, because the conditions for a serene “staying” no longer exist. Younger generations are not given the conditions to love their places.

The waters of Lake Ganzirri, a few kilometers from the centre of Messina, are connected to the adjacent sea by means of canals, some of which date back to the 1830s, as well as to Lake Faro further north.(source: archeome.it)

What do you think about the issue of conurbation between Reggio and Messina? Are there risks of forcing the concept?

The people of the Strait share the ecological and landscape system of the Strait, but from different perspectives. From Messina, for example, we see Villa San Giovanni, not Reggio.

Sicily is an island, while Reggio lies on a peninsula. The approaches are different, but this heterogeneity is a value to be preserved.

The Strait’s ecosystem is an incredible heritage to observe, understand, and preserve.

It is important not to lose sight of the goal and to formulate good projects for a neglected territory.

To attract capital, we have so much culture, memory, and beauty – and this is what matters.

Much of the beauty of the Strait lies more in its villages than in its cities. To what extent is a “village system” imaginable?

A project based on a relationship between villages and cities, developed through physical and digital infrastructure and through securing areas from water-related risks, has great potential. From an economic perspective, it demonstrates that the beauty of the territory can generate stable wealth, independent of tourism seasonality.

More marginal cities, such as Messina, can offer much to a possible village – city pairing, not as an alternative choice – villages or cities – but as a system of relationships the operates at different scales of distance and time.

realtà culturali che amplificano le specificità del territorio in modo attivo e concreto e rappresentano il bello che avanza.

It is essential to start from cultural realities that actively and concretely amplify the specificities of the territory and represent the advancing notion of beauty.

Anna Mallamo, a “strettese” (from Reggio Calabria, she has lived in Messina for many years), works as a journalist at Gazzetta del Sud, where she heads the Culture and Entertainment section. She hosted a regular column for several years in L’Unità and runs a blog on the Huffington Post. She is very active on social media, with the account @manginobrioches.

MESSINA LIES AT THE CENTER OF THE STRAIT AREA, WITHIN A POLITICAL AND REGIONAL SEPARATION THAT CONTRADICTS THE NATURAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND CULTURAL UNITY OF THE TERRITORY. SALVATORE MONDELLO DESCRIBES HOW THE CITY FUNCTIONS, WITH A GLAZE TOWARD EUROPE

Living and mobility. The port system and the water system. Identity. According to Salvatore Mondello – Councillor for Infrastructure and Public Works (with numerous delegated responsibilities) – the emergencies, urgent issues, potential, and development of Messina and the entire Strait area depend on resolving these five conditions.

Going beyond what is visible, understanding the vulnerability and complexity of a territory that was once a destination for the greatest travelers in European and world literature, and that today struggles to reclaim its place on a national and European scale: at its forth edition, Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey across the Strait shares this reflection with Salvatore Mondello.

The Strait of Messina is a magnet – it has always been one throughout history – a hinge of extraordinary natural beauty”, Mondello begins. “All the great travelers of the past were fascinated by the Strait. We simply need to turn the lights back on.”

What are the real strategies for “turning the lights back on” for the city?

Mondello explains that the city stretches for 32 kilometers: on one side toward the narrow strip of land along the Strait, and on the other toward the hilly landscape behind it. It lies at the center of a broader area, even though on the Calabrian Ionian side the conurbation with Reggio Calabria and Villa San Giovanni has never truly become a reality, despite the geographical configuration.

For Gesualdo Bufalino, “… Sicily has had the fate of finding itself, over the centuries, acting as a hinge between Western high culture and the temptations of the desert and the sun, between reason and magic, between the climates of sentiment and the scorching heat of passion” (from the book “Cento Sicilie”).

Mondello extends this idea from the insular scale to the urban one: Messina is a hinge of the Mediterranean both for its port system and for its geographic position. It is a territorial context (similar to that of Genoa) that encompasses and connects very different identities.

From left, Giorgio Tartaro, Salvatore Mondello and Alfonso Femia. Invisible Mediterranean(s) 2021, Journey across the Strait IV. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

And identity itself becomes a key issue in the cultural representation of the Strait, and at this moment also a matter of political urgency that reveals the city’s fragilities and contradictions. The Sicilian Region has in fact accepted the request of thirteen hamlets in the Messina area to hold an independence referendum. The aspiration is to create a new municipality, to be called Montemare, autonomous from the city of Messina. This refers to the northern portion of the territory, where the hillside villages are located.
Mondello explains that separating the administrations would make governance more complex. While fully respecting local identities – which in the past have already produced similar situations in other parts of Sicily – it is the territorial, historical, architectural, and landscape culture that expresses connections and differences, in other words identity itself, rather than the creation of separate administrations.

Heterogenity is the unnderlying framework that defines the entire city of Messina, as Nadia Terranova notes, “The uniqueness of Messina lies in its differences”.

According to Mondello, it is essential – precisely in order to “turn the lights back on” – to leverage the natural connections that already exist: Reggio Calabria and Messina are, before being Calabrian and Sicilian, cities of the Strait. The conurbation finds its meaning in the social, cultural, and economic relationships between the two territorial realities, even though common strategies have not yet been developed.

Mobility is at the center of development, and a shared strategy with Reggio Calabria is envisaged for a unified and coordinated management of the Strait, independently of the Bridge across the Strait, which is seen as a topic that is almost more European than local.
For this reason, within the PUMS, (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan), in its most recent version drafted this past August, reference is made to a “Sea Metro” between the two shores of the Strait of Messina – Reggio Calabria and Villa San Giovanni on one side, and Messina on the other, through fast maritime transport services that allow movement between the cities. The work is oriented toward building a structural framework at both urban and extra-urban levels. The city of Messina and the Metropolitan City share a single mayor, and this contributes to the development of planning on a broader scale.

Turning off – after more than 100 years – the spotlight on the issue of the shanty towns is an unavoidable step in order to switch it back on over the city’s positive urban aspects: moving from decay to quality of living.
The 1908 earthquake in Messina devastated 90% of the city. Temporary shacks were then built, which over time became permanent makeshift housing. Today, demolitions have begun, and urban redevelopment works are underway, along with the definition of a new urban planning standard.

Water is the other major theme that will lead Messina toward the goal of becoming a European city.
Rebuilding the relationship between Messina and its port is essential. The work carried out in cooperation with the Port System Authority, which manages Messina, Reggio Calabria, Milazzo, and Villa San Giovanni, will mark an important phase of urban development for the city.
The Tremestieri port, currently being upgraded, will be able to accommodate up to seven ferries. It will expand southwards with a 320-meter breakwater jetty exposed to winds, and a 34,000-square-meter storage area.
The new port will allow ferry traffic to be removed from the Rada of San Francesco, which can then be transformed into a tourist marina. In this way, the navigability of the Strait will be ensured, and the connection between the sea and the city center will be restored through the functional redevelopment of the Rada.

Access to public water, purification, and wastewater disposal – in other words, the efficiency of the water system – is another major issue in the redemption of the Strait area.
Sicily loses 50,5% of its water through distribution networks. Water scarcity has, in the past, created even very serious problems. A process of rationalization of the overall system is now underway, including the introduction of remote monitoring systems for the water network.
The Fiumefreddo aqueduct is the main water resource available to the Messina system. Sicilian fiumare, like those in Calabria, are highly intermittent by nature due to geomorphological conditions: they appear suddenly and briefly, then disappear. Water resources, which can be collected and stored in reservoirs, are also present in the hills. The municipal administration and Amam (Azienda Meridionale Acqua Messina) are working together to develop structural interventions aimed at long-term solutions.

View of the Madonna della Lettera of Messina from the Exhibition Citadel. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Mondello emphasizes that the city’s shift in direction depends both on housing and territorial policies and on the way the city itself is perceived – and that this latter aspect is fundamental to its transformation.
Throughout its history, Messina has experienced periods of significant development (notably in the 1970s and 1980s) as well as phases of slowdown.
Today, it is necessary to focus on quality and to plan an urban development coherent with the city’s growth, in the most appropriate way possible. This means that programming must be forward-looking, must exclude isolated “spot” interventions, and must express long-term plans that go beyond electoral cycles.
The preservation of cultural and identity heritage is certainly essential, but it is equally important to think of Messina as a European city.
“This is not a slogan,” he notes, “because if administrators and citizens, intellectuals, writers, journalists, and artists change the way they look at the city, the city itself will change”.

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THE SOUTH LIES AT THE EDGE OF EUROPE: IT STRUGGLES MORE TO MAKE ITS VOICE HEARD BUT, IN THE PAST, IT MADE A GREAT CONTRIBUTION TO THE COUNTRY’S HISTORY. AND NOW IT IS PREPARING TO START AGAIN FROM AGRI-CULTURE with Pietro Taccone

Pietro Taccone and his family could be the protagonists of a film: a melting pot of cultures, where the cool Anglo-Saxon spirit intertwines with passionate Neapolitan roots, followed by a long period in Milan and then a return to Southern Italy – bringing with them the energy, expertise, and discipline needed to transform Calabria into a truly European region.

Pietro begins speaking about the South, recalling its glorious past: not as a learned historical synopsis, but as a premise for the potential re-emergence of the territory.

200920_Mediterranei-Invisibili_©Stefano-Anzini_IMG_6291 From left to right: Giorgio Tartaro, Pietro Taccone, and Alfonso Femia during Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey across the Strait III, talk session on 20 September 2020. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were leading European powers, with remarkably progressive governments. In 1839, the first double-track railway link in Italy was built to connect Naples and Portici. Shipyards, metalworking, texitle, food-processing, and sulfur-extraction industries, along with agriculture, wow highly developed and firmly established. with commercial relations extending throughout Europe. Then, in the post-unification period, a dark era followed, and people began speaking of the “Southern Question”. The South became simpy “the South”. Our farm is what remains of an estate that originated earlier, in the 1700s, and that generated employment and prosperity throughout Calabria. It was a 40,000-hectares in the Plain of Gioia Tauro where olive cultivation is predominant. We have centuries-old olive trees dating back to the late 18th century. We work continuously to innovate the production process and refine a product with outstanding qualities. We have preserved most of the ancient olive trees, while mechanizing fruit harvesting as early as the 1980s through the use of shaker machines. Before this innovation, olives from centuries-old trees were used to produce “lampante” oil, so called because throughout the 19th century and the early 20th century it was used for lighting and exported to Russia. Other oil was exported to France and England for soap production, including the famous Marseille soap. The centuries-old trees, reaching heights of up to 20 meters, did not allow for the early harvesting of the olives. Harvesting occurred only after natural falling once the fruit had fully ripened, resulting in a degraded product with excessively high acidity levels. The olives could not be used to produce extra virgin oil. To achieve a leap in quality, it was enough to anticipate the harvest. Managing these trees is complex because of their size, but shaker machines have enabled us to harvest olives before full ripening, obtaining fruit with excellent organoleptic characteristics in both aroma and flavor. In this way, we entered a high-end niche market. Calabria was actually the first region to import shakers from California, whose mechanical action is carefully calibrated so as not to damage the trees. However, harvesting olives from centuries-old trees still requires a large workforce because of the “sesto ducale” layout – that is, the wide spacing between one tree and another. For this reason, we decided to plant part of the land with younger, smaller trees spaced six meters apart. This allows for more efficient management of cultivation, both from a phytosanitary perspective and in terms of harvesting, using umbrella shakers that require only two workers per tree instead of the six to eight needed for the ancient trees. Replacing old trees is costly and, rightly so, subject to landscape preservation regulations. Managing these olive groves is by no means simple, and many olive growers rely on state subsidies whenever they are available. On our farm, 50% of the old olive groves have been preserved, with careful attention paid to maintaining the same native varieties – Ottobratica and Sinopolese – in order to preserve the unique character of the territory. Our olive oil is distributed throughout Europe and the United States. Olive growing as once a flourishing and prosperous economy, and today it seeks to regain the splendor of the past and assume a significant role within an international context. Supporting agricultural development is part of a broader process of economic transformation in our region, one that can truly stand alongside the country’s industry, tertiary sector, and services, making it competitive and a meaningful player within the European and globalized landscape. Our company employs 50 people engaged in overseeing the entire supply chain, from cultivation to bottling. We live in a small village established in the 1700s in the Plain of Gioia Tauro: the village of Cannavá, which has been redeveloped with a focus on hospitality, tourism, and cultural activities. The heart of the village is Masseria Santa Teresa dating back to the 1830s and composed of a series of buildings arranged around a quadrangular square. It is a system centered on agriculture as its core identity, one that also sustains itself through the added functions of hospitality and cultural engagement.

Olive harvest, October 2020, at the Acton farm in Leporano. Photo by Salvatore Greco.

Is the revival of Calabria through the land and olive trees too romantic a vision? Perhaps things are a little more complex in Calabria, but mano agricultural businesses are adapting to contemporary challenges, embracing technology and emerging as important realities in terms of employment and economic impact. There is remarkable dynamism: many have successfully renewed themselves by following European directives, investing in biogas systems for livestock farming and renewable energy through the use of pruning residues that can be transformed into wood chips. All of Calabria is engaged in this transformation: in the Lamezia area through citrus cultivation; in the Crotone area through wine production, which is gaining significant recognition nationally and internationally; and in the Reggio Calabria area through bergamot production for the French and international perfume industry. Along the Reggio Calabria coast, Calabrian mangoes are also cultivated. This demonstrates that starting again from the land and from agri-culture is neither merely an idea or simpley a project, but a reality that already exists.

Do infrastructure gaps, including those within the region itself, penalize you? Are they a determining factor in development prospects? The issue of missing roads must be evaluated and weighed in the proper terms. Calabria is a mountainous region: Sila, Pollino, and Aspromonte are our mountains, and mountains are difficult to manage everywhere. What would be extremely important is the rigorous maintenance of the existing neytwrk, wihich currently suffers from major deficiencies in this regard. We are actually in a better position than some other territories. The Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway functions, even though the thirty-year reconstruction process caused enormous inconvenience and disruption. The Tyrrhenian coast is well connected to the rest of the country, and there are also two major high ways leaiding to the Ionian coast. The need to develop infrastructure must take into account the geomorphological structure of the territory. One cannot simply exploit the issue of missing roads without carefully assessing the benefits in relation to the investments required and the environmental and territorial risks involved. Our disadvantage lies in being geographically “at the end” of the peninsula: regardless of the means of transport, we still have to travel 1,200 kilometers to reach Italy’s gateways to Europe, the major distribution centers, and the main logistics hubs. What could have been our greatest strengths has been completely undermined by its function and by the lack of railway connections. The Port of Gioia Tauro is a missed opportunity. To build it, an extraordinary environmental landscape was sacrificed, and yet it provides no real service to its own region. It is an international transshipment port, a closed and highly specialized system. Our natural shortcut to Europe and other countries – the sea – is effectively reserved for another exclusive function.

Is our provocation – placing the South at the center of the process of revitalizing both Italy and Europe as a whole – a realistic prospect? I am convinced that it is possible, by using agriculture as a driver for generating sustainable local economies. Calabria does not possess the territorial or environmental conditions necessary to develop large-scale industrial sectors. Attempts at industrialization have produced only the remains of unfinished factories and abandoned industrial blights. The only industry that truly makes sense to develop is a rural one, capable of creating stable local employment with a strong international outlook. To achieve this, local politics must support these projects by following European directives and making proper use of European funding opportunities. It must also recognize that agricultural planning, by its very nature, does not follow the five-year cycle of political elections, but instead requires a much longer-term vision. Mistimed decisions, a poor understanding of real needs, and a lack of specific expertise have led to misguided choices, effectively leaving agricultural entrepreneurs alone to pursue – and at times even fulfill – the dream of establishing their territory on the world stage.

The opening photo is by Stefano Anzini.

200918_Mediterranei-Invisibili_∏Stefano-Anzini

BETTING ON YOUNG PEOPLE AND CULTURE: IT’S NOT A SLOGAN, BUT THE ONLY OPPORTUNITY TO FREE SICILY FROM PERCEPTUAL DISTORTIONS with Pietro Briguglio

Pietro Briguglio, the mayor of Nizza di Sicilia, speaks about a Sicily that wants to go beyond its borders – both physically and by building bridges between the memory of the past, the “outside” world, and the future.

Pietro Briguglio, Mayor of Nizza di Sicilia during Invisible Mediterranean(s)-Journey across the Strait, 17 September 2020. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Sicily is not mafia and crime. If that remains, in the background, a persistent perception shaped by an outdated reading of the territory, it is equally true that today the reality is completely different. An example? Savoca is the village of the 17 mummies, one of the most beautiful villages in Italy. It dates back to 1134, but it became famous in 1972 because Francis Ford Coppola, the director of The Godfather, shot some scenes of the film there.
And this is not the only perceptual distortion weighing on and slowing down the island’s development.
For example, Sicily is not only Taormina, nor is just seasonal seaside tourism.
And history and culture are not found only in Palermo and Noto.

Sicily is a land that goes beyond the distances and physical limits of being an island.
Of course, there are real limitations, but they have become so worn down over time that they have almost lost their intensity and urgency: the lack of internal infrastructure, the exodus of the younger population, the bridge that was never built, and the patchy spread of the digital network.
There are also other, less visible limits, yet equally restrictive: from a “human” perspective, we are not sufficiently equipped in terms of professional skills and capabilities to move with agility through a highly complex bureaucratic landscape – both at the regional and national level and, above all, in accessing and making use of the economic opportunities offered by Europe. Developing projects, reporting results, and meeting deadlines all require an organic and well-structured operational approach in terms of procedures.

How important is tourism for the revival of this part of Sicily?
The strenght of seaside tourism also represents, to some extent, a limitation: we neglect the inland’s landscape and cultural treasures. Even the coastline outside the reference hub of Taormina is an underused heritage asset with enormous potential to make tourism less seasonal. An example closely connected to my own territory is the Nisi Valley, on the Ionian side of Messina, made up of small seaside towns and ancient hilltop villages. The valley has prehistoric origins and developed around one of the most important mountains in the Peloritani Mountains range, Monte Scuderi. The direct contact between sea and mountain makes these places fascinating and intense, and it is from here that the “Ring of the Nisi” was born, including Alì Terme, Alì, Fiumedinisi, and Nizza di Sicilia.
A great work that cannot be enjoyed by the community, locked away in a private room, represents an unjust way of relating art to society. Much of Sicily is an extraordinary work of art that remains undervalued and largely unknown.
The spread of culture – and the tourism that can grow from it – is the true instrument for revitalizing the territory.
Un’affermazione forte e autonoma in A strong and independent affirmation in this direction would generate the interest of central government and accelerate the construction of infrastructure. It could trigger a virtuous cycle capable of breaking down all these barriers.
Culture begins with an intense program of education and training that creates a sense of belonging to the territory, reverses the processe of youth migration, and generates jobs for culture, through culture.
Mental barriers can only be dismantled through culture. For Sicily, this is therefore a fundamental issue. What will redeem our land from distorted perceptions is the commitment of a younger generation encouraged – through education and culture – to believe in and invest in Sicily.

Borders and limitations must be transformed into horizons, aspiring to new models that constantly encourage the search for visions without boundaries.
Sicily can be imagined as a kind of beneficial, energizing, healing IV drip – a slow – release infusion of culture, history, and traditions to be administrated to the whole of Italy.
In Egypt and in other countries that have marked the course of human evolution, excavations continue endlessly, even after the essential has already been revealed.
We, too, have an immense cultural heritage to uncover and share, yet there is little interest in “digging” into our land. Not investigating our history means remaining one step behind.
Returning to the town of Savoca, Francis Ford Coppola’s choice and the success of The Godfather acted as a sounding board for the entire area. Today, the power of the internet spreads awareness of territories, curiosity, and the desire to visit them – and this, too, can work in combination with the development of the island’s internal physical infrastructure.
We are also moving forward on this front. Last September, the Government Commissioner and the CEO of Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, Maurizio Gentile, signed the approval of the final project for the doubling of the railway tracks between Giampilieri and Fiumefreddo di Sicilia, for an investment of €2.3 billion, already fully funded. The ordinance marks another decisive step forward in the realization of the Messina-Catania-Palermo railway axis, coming just days after the conclusion of the service conference held last August. With the approval now granted, the publication of tenders for the two functional sections – Fiumefreddo di Sicilia–Taormina/Letojanni and Taormina/Letojanni–Catania – can proceed in the coming weeks. The project completes the doubling of the railway line between Messina and Catania and includes the construction of 42 kilometers of which will run underground. This will increase the line’s capacity for both passenger and freight traffic and reduce travel times between Messina and Catania by approximately 30 minutes, enabling the development of a metropolitan-style rail service from Catania to Taormina/Letojanni.

Is the Bridge across the Strait of Messina a decisive factor within this framework of development?
The bridge is a primary infrastructure project, connecting Sicily to the mainland, both for the transport of goods and for the movement of people. The benefits would be undeniable, even though, after postponing its construction for nearly a century, the urban complexity of the departure and arrival areas has grown enormously. Today, compensation measures are necessary to address the disruption that the project would inevitably bring.
Beyond the debates, reflections, and the technological, institutional, economic, and environmental issues involved, the only indisputable reality is that building this bridge is both urgent and appropriate: it is not only in the interest of Sicily and Calabria, but of the whole Italy.

The opening photo is by Stefano Anzini.

IN THIS 2020, THE MEANING OF THINGS HAS CHANGED. THE SOUTH IS OUR BEST OPPORTUNITY

Alfonso Femia opens the third edition of Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey across the Strait.

“We can no longer just talk; for politics and architecture, it is time to act.”

It was not supposed to be a four-day event, nor was it meant to take place in September.
The idea was for it to last a full week, in June, during which field research on the territory would be combined with an organic re-examination of the themes and situations we had previously explored separately in the two earlier editions. I am referring to Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey Across the Strait III,, which despite the pandemic, we chose to undertake also – or rather especially – in 2020, albeit with reduced time and programming, in order to affirm the need and the will to state that the South can no longer be read, interpreted, and experienced as it has been up to now.

It is precisely 2020 that marks the first demonstration of how strong the South can be, and how this strength can sustain the country as a whole.
I believe that what Invisible Mediterranean(s) has revealed – and will continue to reveal – is important for the country. As we will read in the interviews with representatives of local public administrations, presidents of professional orders, and Sicilian and Calabrian architects, the meaning of words and actions can change when the perspective and gaze are different, and above all when dialogue and confrontation take place on site.
“Infrastructure”, “school”, “village”, “territory” carry different meanings and nuances in places such as Messina compared to places like Siena or elsewhere, and the evidence of this diversity must be strengthened and made more widely known.

There is no romanticism in the gaze of Invisible Mediterranean(s). Each investigation brings to light problems that can no longer be confined within an isolated identity, but must instead be expressed and resolved through connection with other identities. Citiens exist within territories, just as villages do, just as landscapes, coastlines, and mountains do. And Journey across the Strait reveals these connections and the overall system of relationship that binds them together.

Citing Cyprian Broodbank, author of “Il Mediterraneo” (Einaudi, 2015), perhaps the most interesting and brilliant narrative on the subject in the last decade, the characteristics of the Mediterranean are often taken as given facts. Yet the Mediterranean system is made up of closely interconnected centers, whose surprising economic and cultural development has become a model for the entire world. As Broodbank writes: “The Mediterranean of prehistory, a microcosm where everything has come to a standstill, is the perfect model for helping us investigate the globalized world in which we live”.

For example, in the past, highly original civilizations such as Cyprus and Malta, which reached peaks of development, were later reabsorbed into the dominant trend – and this represents, in Broodbank’s view, “the dark side of globalization. A warning message for all of us”.

And is the contemporary Mediterranean a sea of relations?
“Absolutely. If in the past it experienced both moments of confrontation and conflict, the prevailing message that emerges is that of a place of encounter – a place where stereotypes are constantly challenged and dismantled”, says Cyprian Broodbank. We strongly believe that, starting from the second half of 2020, national and European policies must invest in the Southern Mediterranean of Italy. Not as an act of compassion, but as a new center of energy for the entire Old Continent.

Journey across the Strait. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

The exploration Invisible Mediterranean(s), with the third Journey across the Strait, resumes together with Marco Predari (500×100) and Giorgio Tartaro, journalist who followed the previous editions, capturing the invisibility not only of the Mediterraneans, but also of journeys themselves.

GIORGIO TARTARO’S NEUROIMAGING FOR INVISIBLE MEDITERRANEAN(S)

Let’s play a game.
A videogame.
Or rather, a game of images.
To make the invisible Mediterranean visible – even in its plural form – we can imagine the bounce of a ball. A basketball, perhaps. And imagine its sound in an empty gym.
As a bearer – hopefully a healthy one – of internal Invisible Mediterranean(s), as a lake dweller who loves the sea, I imagine this ball bouncing from Greek and Latin epics to the recent image of a Mediterranean rotated ninety degrees: unrecognizable, yet fascinating, like a future highway.
From Phoenician and Roman splendours to the Maritime Republics, from the fragmented history of a richly biodiverse “boot-shaped” country to the troubled process of Italian unification, from times of excessive government to times of no government at all… It is astonishing to think that, apart from devastations and agricultural, artisanal, and industrial revolutions, many – very many – things have fortunately endured.
For instance, the desire for discovery: just as in coastal landscapes, so too in inland, pre-Alpine and mountainous ones, it reveals exemplary moments of recognition. Tradition, the will to recover, effort, commitment, attachment, people, identity.
The encyclopaedists work on these dynamics and return splendours. The fact is that Invisible Mediterranean(s) bounces very high. It elects a “Virgil 4.0” and surgically identifies heterodox contemporary heroes – those who fight against the common opinion of the obvious, who research, design, study, involve, and connect… in short, as my children would say, they really go all in.
No, it is not just cool or picturesque: it is an ethical and luminous way of being in time, this telling of Invisible Mediterranean(s).
Those that some know and hide. Those that many long for and cannot find. Those that, sometimes, by sheer luck, we happen to encounter.
And then it becomes a kind of drama. Because they are like beautiful songs, refrains, synthetic dependencies you can’t quite escape.
Travel is about seeing with new eyes…new sounds, scents, energies, sensations, friends, anecdotes…in short: human beings. Women and men who, outside the uniform of formality, rejoice in telling, collecting, giving.
For me, Invisible Mediterranean(s) are everything that escapes the individual, egoism, the idea of status and social position.
Once Muhammad Al began a speech in public. He apparently didn’t quite know what to say. At some point, he said: “Me, we”.
He then reportedly reworked the “Me, We” pronounced at Harvard in 1965 into “Me, Whee” a joyful “me!”, or rather “I? Hooray!” Perhaps suggested by his team or by circumstance.
Personally, I prefer the first version. Which is also my point of view on the Invisible Mediterranean(s), seen from the kaleidoscopic position of the Inner Mediterraneans: it is, fully and legitimately, an “I,we”. A-Sea Our Sea.

YOU CAN START AGAIN FROM THE SOUTH, BY MARCO PREDARI

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is part of the broader project of Marco Predari, 500×100, which was launched five years ago with the aim of investigating, through dialogue, paths of built and conceptual architecture. It has progressively strengthened and expanded, moving from its first Milan-based experience at the Salone del Mobile to other national contexts, including Venice, Rome, Pisa, and the South.

It represents an important commitment for a company such as Universal Selecta, a leading organization that this year won the Compasso d’Oro in the “Office Furniture and Accessories” category. The company supports the process of growth in Southern regions through the encounter and alignment between politics and architecture, also through the 500×100 platform.

As a company, we share initiatives rich in content in Puglia, Sicily, and Campania, and we believe that the entire South can be transformed from an area of development into a territory for validating effective experiences.

CALABRIA IS IN CONSTANT MOTION, BUT SOMETIMES ITS COURSE IS THE WRONG ONE. LET US ABANDON OLD PROCESS MODELS AND FACE OUR “ARCHAIC FUTURE” with Salvatore Greco

Salvatore Greco, architect and council member of the Order of the Architects of Reggio Calabria, overturns the preconceived narrative of a poor Calabria. Its supposed poverty exists only in the eyes of the those who are unable to see.

“Calabria is wealth”
Salvatore Greco opens with this stement, immediately and decisivly removing one of the many stereotypes surrounding Calabria as a “poor region”. It is a beautiful narrative by Greco one that does not indulge in sentimentality but instead develops a rigorous analysis grounded in observation and the memory of places. An alternating vision – close-up and from a distance – that returns the most honest and passionate portrait of the South.

Calabria is rich in perceptions. Its highly distinctive morphology is itself a form of wealth.
It is a mountainous region, made of mountains that face each other across the seas (the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian), and the physical space between the coasts and the Aspromonte is filled with countless stories.
Eight hundred kilometers of coastline, pastoral culture and cuisine…other narratives and forms of wealth.
Another form of wealth is the Calabrian “unfinished”: the rebar of pillars emerging from slabs, awkward volumes rising up, unfulfilled promises of houses – behind every house there is a social story, and this is wealth. Further wealth is the suspended sense of time, as if it stops and then resumes.
A sad form of wealth, but still wealth, is that of lands abandoned due to economic necessity, hydrogeological instability, earthquakes, and floods.
There is also the wealth of ghost towns, where only the past exists, while present and future are merely illusory intentions: the village of Amendolea and its river, the Cretto di Burri in Gibellina, which tells not what once existed, but its disappearance, the aftermath of the earthquake. The linguistic richness of the Grecanic area (certainly not a “minority” – a word that feels wrong and contradicts its enchantment and fascination).

Again, suspended time. All of this is wealth.

Then we move into the question of how to use and invest this extraordinary value.
A first reflection is that some of these situations have been preserved precisely because they have remained inaccessible.
And while invisibility and inaccessibility can certainly have negative connotations, I believe it is preferable to maintain an extreme form of protection rather than resorting to misguided interventions or restoration approaches that turn villages into something resembling and “Indian reservation”.
That would mean losing wealth rather than gaining it – making room for a form of consumption that empties places out, a throwaway use of territories.
Change, “progress”, even in its most aggressive forms, has reached Calabria filtered through its environmental character and geography – sometimes hostile – and this has caused less damage than in other regions.
We must encourage a delicate form of tourism, one that is not offensive or arrogant.
Landscapes transformed into postcard panoramas end up aligning with an undifferentiated mass of postcard-like landscapes.
The danger is that the richness of values is reduced to a merely transitory purchasing power – and the lost forever.

Can the authenticity of the Calabrian territory be reconciled within a European framework? The provocation we are putting forward with Invisible Mediterranean(s) is that of restarting the country (and Europe as well) from the southern Mediterranean.
These are not separate positions, but shared objectives grounded in respect for identity.
In Calabria there is no strong opposition between countryside and city; our wealth comes from the rural world and can be interpreted and strengthened within a European perspective. We are cities, villages, and communities: we must relaunch the vision of the world within and through communities.
For this reason, I believe a surgical level of attention is needed in how tourism is directed. And we must do this ourselves, as Calabrians.
Many things have been “dropped from above” onto us – for example investments in the steel industry, despite its crisis (with Taranto already struggling as a competitor). The Port of Gioia Tauro later managed to transform itself into a transshipment hub, but generating little local spin-off. The port is in fact a ZES–Special Economic Zone–which means that production and processing take place and exchange happens within the port itself. However, the lack of adequate rail infrastructure and railway terminals hinders the development of a potential local economic ecosystem.

We simply need to return to being what we once where, without anachronistic positions, within a framework of real change.
Calabria is in constant motion, but too often the course it takes is the wrong one.
We can speak a great deal about conservation– about architecture, landscape, and places. But places and landscapes exist through their transformation. To trivialize concepts and apply labels – first “sustainability”, now “resilience” – while pretending not to understand what real mutation means, overlaying inadequate models onto communities, is precisely to take the wrong direction.

In Calabria there are two dawns and two sunsets: the sun rises over the Ionian Sea and over the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the water is made of two seas and of the fiumare. Geography is what shapes history. And it is from here that we must begin.
Politics – which is a fundamental component in triggering architectural processes – must detach itself from models that do not work and embrace the regenerative capacity inherent in territories.
Nik Spatari, an internationally renowned artist and recently deceased, founder of Musaba, the art park in Mammola, spoke of the “archaic future” of Calabria – an idea that is less visionary and more deeply rooted in reality.
“I wish greater fortune to this my, and our, ultramediterranean Calabria”.
With Nik Spatari.

A GIANT LOOKING OUT TOWARD THE SEA AND THE PLAIN BEHIND IT: GIOIA TAURO, A UNIQUE PLACE DIVIDED IN TWO, EEMBODYING AND REFLECTING THE DESTINY OF A SOUTH SHAPED BY ILLOGICAL SEPARATIONS. A CONDITION THAT ARCHITECTURE CAN TRANSFORM with Giovanni Multari

Giovanni Multari, architect and professor at University of Naples Federico II, believes that regeneration should be a program implemented through small steps, relying on alternative solutions: if the Bridge is not built, let’s immediately redevelop Villa San Giovanni. If industry is not working, let’s invest everything in agri-“culture”.

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is dialogue, comparison, and investigation. It is a journey and a revelation of the invisible dimensions of Sicily and Calabria. It is all of this, but above all it is a way to recognize and reaffirm the strong identity of shy places seeking a sustainable synchronicity with contemporary time.
The Mediterranean is a vast theme belonging to many cultures, marked by different geographies and united by ‘invisible’ aspects, contradictions, and harmonies. The Mediterranean of the Strait is a hidden and reserved place, despite still being a major crossroads and a transnational hub.
At the heart of this Mediterranean, of the South, Rosarno, the plain, and the port of Gioia Tauro form an extraordinary aggregation of masterful visual and olfactory euphonies, together with striking dissonances and urban distress.
Gioia Tauro is a geometric center, but also a generator of economic and political meanings. A place of failed strategies and missed opportunities.
The Port of Gioia Tauro is a giant facing only toward the sea, turning its back on the land because it generates little local impact, is self-sufficient in its function and organization, and is more inclined to look toward the Suez Canal or Strait of Gibraltar than toward its own plain.
Expanding the gaze outward, the richness of extraordinary places immediately emerges – places that have always nourished Calabria. A predominantly agricultural world, whose Calabrian environmental context makes it fertile ground for an evolution that can positively intertwine with architecture.

In Calabria and throughout the South, architecture takes on the meaning of care for the land and for communities; it becomes agri-culture.
We must invest in the traditions we have, enhance them, and make them known: recent pandemic events have confirmed Calabria’s capacity to be an extraordinary reservoir of energy and have highlighted that the region can be self-sufficient.
Infrastructure difficulties still exist, but we are working on them step by step: for example, our mountains are no longer inaccessible. The Club Alpino Italiano has mapped most of the trails and opened the way to a form of tourism that is passionate and respectful of places.
In these mountains lie areas only partially shaped by human activity, revealing an authentic heritage of culture and traditions. It is a unique monumental reality, that of the Sila mountain range, which contrasts with the coastline – a threshold element of the Mediterranean – where design is directed toward the essential themes of ecology and the environment.
In this unusual summer, the first phase of coexistence with coronavirus, Calabria experienced a moment of great redemption, lived across its entire territory, visited by tourists from all over Italy and even by some European visitors. A sign of attention, appreciation, a first step toward taking – by right – a place within a European geography, also through tourism.

Where do we go after tourism?
Urban regeneration processes are not only made of large-scale transformations. Alongside major works – complex and difficult to implement – there is a small, continuous effort that also reaches the less visible territorial fringes and opens up unknown cultural and physical channels of communication.
We already have an infrastructure system in place that works, and it must be integrated with what is still missing.
The Ionian backbone suffers more, while the Tyrrhenian one is very dynamic, and from these different speeds of places emerges an unusual beauty, the awareness of a diachronic condition that generates positive evolutions out of contradiction: Paola, Crotone, Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro, Reggio Calabria.
There are territorial conditions that can be improved without major transformations, regenerating from the ground up and involving communities and citizens.

Let’s take a step back: how do the different “souls” of the same territory coexist?
Sometimes they are separate, sometimes they intersect. The Port of Gioia Tauro should be better connected with the plain. And if the best industry in Calabria is agriculture, then the agricultural system must be highlighted and enhanced, from cultivation to forestry, considering that it generates a significant economic impact, with exports across Europe.
But above all, precisely in order to reconcile these different identities, we must never stop and proceed in small steps: if the Strait Bridge is not built, let’s redevelop Villa San Giovanni, equipping it as a place of transit, imagining a large marina, and replicating the same program in Messina, to improve the efficiency of the two gateways.
Before thinking about new projects, we should survey what already exists: abandoned places and unfinished construction sites.
Let’s create a table of people who live in the communities; we do not need prefabricated solutions imposed from above.
Let’s involve a network of local businesses, breaking away from a system governed by patronage politics that has damaged Italy as a whole and especially the South.

THE INFRASTRUCTURAL GAP GENERATES A CULTURAL GAP. THE DESIGN NARRATIVE STOPS, THE PERSPECTIVE CLOSES. CONNECTION – BETWEEN CLABRIA AND SICILY, BETWEEN THE IONIAN COAST AND THE TYRRHENIAN COAST – IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO BEYOND THE LIMIT with Francesco Messina

Francesco Messina, architect and contract lecturer at the University of Ferrara, addresses the concept of “limit”: the limits of cultural policy, of environmental policy, and of an attitude of self-imitation that prevents major transformation in the extraordinary space between Sicily and Calabria.

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is a narrative that makes it possible to discover territories that would otherwise remain in the background. Above all, it is a form of ‘proof of existence’., because without knowledge, storytelling, and representation, places and landscapes would not exist beyond their physical boundaries. The Journeys Across the Strait have the merit of going beyond the limit of invisibility.
The limit is the most serious problem of our territories: the Strait of Messina has a geographical and political specificity, a point of tension between the island and mainland dimensions of Italy, a large water space where the distance between the two shores is ‘dialectically’ variable. The journey becomes a syncrasis between these cultures – Sicilian and Calabrian – which find in the Strait a unique form of synthesis and propulsive energy, something that concerns the entire Italian South.
Landscapes are revealed, places are identified, and their knowledge is amplified, extending it to the entire local community and to Italy, in a global expansion where, finally, the limit is broken down.
Invisibility is a limit linked to the difficulty of physical connections between places, a condition that feeds and perpetuates itself through the constraints imposed by a culture of conservation which, in a distorted cognitive process, overlaps with certain environmental policies.
Thus, a geographical limit is transformed into a major political limit that discourages development projects and encourages the abandonment of territories sorrounded by increasingly high mental walls.
All levels of infrastructure are missing, starting from the physical one – and I am not referring only to exceptional engineering works such as bridges and viaducts, but also to basic roads.
In Sicily there is greater sensitivity; in Calabria, the two coasts – Ionian and Tyrrhenian – do not communicate with each other.
The revival of Calabria depends on these connection nodes between east and west, and between the interior, the mountains, and the coasts.
Architecture must intersect with infrastructure projects, acting on the territory to bring out its value and transform it into a driver for tourism flows.

Tourism is a key element for places with unique environmental characteristics. But architecture has the responsibility to look toward the everyday life of a territory …
A country’s strategy can coordinated through architecture, which brings together, within an overall vision, the regeneration of places without allowing certain functions to prevail at the expense of others, and without creating single “vocations”.
Calabria region, in particular, must restart from architecture because it is dense with contradictions; it has been scarred by illegal construction that has continued, unpunished, for years. Architecture recognizes beauty everywhere, even where the “ordinary” eye sees only ugliness, and design is the best tool for redemption.
Redemption and regeneration feed one another, creating places for social life, public and accessible spaces. And precisely the lack of places where people can gather, engage, and find orientation is another serious limitation for communities. On the part of central government, there is a total lack of attention to real needs, and even local politics struggles to understand the true priorities.

Do decision-making and operational processes seem slower in Southern Italy than elsewhere? Is there a different sense of time in Calabria and Sicily?
Contrary to this common perception, I distance myself from the cliché of the “slow time” of the South: time is the same in both the North and the South. The difference is that in the South, Time expands in order to settle, to be absorbed, and metabolized. In the unique space between Sicily and Calabria, there is no such thing as “disposable” time – a consumable kind of time that leaves no trace of reflection or growth. In the South, Time always leaves something behind.

VILLAGES AND LANDSCAPES SPEAK OF CALABRIA. BUT IT IS IMMATERIALITY AND SUSPENSION THAT CONSTITUTE ITS PERFECT NARRATIVE EPIPHANY with Michelangelo Pugliese

Unexpected are the reflections of Michelangelo Pugliese, architect and landscape designer, professor at the University of Naples Federico II: mutation as a stable element of the landscape, and the search for beauty everywhere – even in what is ‘ugly’

Is the South a territory?
Michelangelo Pugliese is not particularly fond of the world ‘territory’, arguing that it evokes a ‘1970s flavor’ and an overly technical, urban-planning dimension. He prefers to use the term ‘landscape’. Why?

Because, in his view, ‘territory’ tends to frame space as something primarily administered, measured, and governed through planning categories – roads, zoning, infrastructure, administrative boundaries. It carries a bureaucratic and functionalist imprint that became especially strong in post-1960s and 1970s planning culture. ‘Landscape’, instead, shifts the focus. It is not just a container of functions, but a lived and perceived space: a synthesis of natural forms, built environments, memory, perception, and everyday practices. It allows for ambiguity, change, and even contradiction – including abandonment, transformation, and informal uses – without reducing everything to a planning problem to be solved. In that sense, speaking of ‘landscape’ rather territory is also a way of resisting a purely technical or top-down gaze. It opens the possibility of reading the South not only as something to be organized, but as something already meaningful, already narrated, and constantly evolving – even in its fragilities.

The relationship between these three elements is in continuous evolution, and this immediately highlights how the expression ‘landscape restoration’ is, in itself, a contradiction in terms.
Mutation is the primary characteristic of landscape.
Calabria is a landscape that cannot be trivialized through opportunistic interpretations tied to villages, coastal areas, or mountains. Starting with villages, we are not dealing with idyllic situations, as the term itself often seems to suggest regardless of context.
In Calabria there is no widespread desire to ‘return to the villages’; this is more a media distortion or an exercise in balancing architecture and marketing narratives.
Often, villages are not only abandoned places, but also damaged by an unforgiving and often ugly form of construction – acts of architectural violence that have unfortunately sedimented over time.
The complexity of reinterpreting them also involves the theme of dwelling, which contemporary society has profoundly transformed.
As well taught in Spanish schools of architecture, the design theme is not singular but must be declared and adapted according to places and situations.
Thus, today, living in a village is different from living in a small town. The actions required must be appropriate and coherent with the historical dimension, the recent past, and future perspectives.
Certainly, the only thing that cannot be done is simply ‘returning’ as if going back to the village had, in itself, a healing or redemptive value.
If ways of living have changed, and this transformation must be supported through design actions, then with equal care we must avoid trivializing the process of updating, or turning interventions into mere salone exercises. A propositive example of a well-conceived project is Farm Cultural Park, near Agrigento, which has enhanced a degraded and abandoned place through cultural regeneration.

The example of Favara is remarkable, but its starting point already had some advantages: the Moorish-styly courtyards in Favara’s historic centre, and its proximity to Agrigento …

Villages to be restored do not all start from the same conditions of fascinating abandonment and decay wrapped in brambles that conceal extraordinary beauty.
However, the intensity of a suspended soul exist in all centres that were once inhabited: a hidden soul, sometimes deeply concealed by ‘uglyness’. I also believe it is an advantage to work on places where beauty is more hidden. In such cases, research can free itself from the constraints of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, but above all from certain cultural approaches that do not allow for the new, or take into account the unpredictability of a design thinking shaped by landscape and communities.

Our project, Invisible Mediterranean(s), has the unique merit of revealing the beauty behind ugliness, without fearing to engage with visions closer to a scenario of desolation that to the enchanted forest of Sleeping Beauty.
All of this is the authentic contemporary South: a South that coexists with ugliness and, in turn, coexists with magnificent landscapes, tongues of sea and light. It is a reality that must be valued and cannot be ignored, because it is within it that communities live – memory of the past and energy for the future, the true strength of the South.
It is the immaterial dimension that filters the beauty of landscapes and villages, making everything clear and more legible, beyond the stereotype of the postcard image.
The architect’s work thus becomes more difficult, as it requires the reconstruction of the immaterial dimension of territories, often suffocated by labels and narratives that have distorted their soul.

In this balance between needs and desires, time plays an essential role.
The time of South is different, but it is not slower, as is often said. It is a non-linear time, made of compressions and dilations: at times it condenses rapidly, at others it settles. Actions combine according to this temporal balance, from which design action emerges.
More than ever today, architecture must step down from the pedestal, be courageous, take risks, and accept even the possibility of error.

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