The 1968 disaster left at least 231 people dead and 100,000 homeless, but it was rebuilding Salemi that split the local community

'Where it was – but not how it was': how the Sicilian earthquake divided a town

'Where it was – but not how it was': how the Sicilian earthquake divided a town

On a summer’s night in Salemi, an ancient hilltop town in western Sicily, a group of children are playing football across the floor of church, using each transept as a goal. Some older teenagers sit below the altar, laughing and gossiping loudly.

A local bar owner, Fabrizio Internicola, looks on. Does it seem strange to him to see kids kicking a ball around inside a grand 17th-century church?

The mentality of the project was to adapt to the reality of the problems created by the earthquake

“No,” says Internicola emphatically. “For those of us who live round here, it’s nice to see kids playing football, or people playing music there. It means the place is still alive.”

The church, Chiesa Madre, was destroyed by a violent earthquake that ripped through Sicily 50 years ago this year, killing 231 people and leaving almost 100,000 homeless. The valley of Belice, where Salemi lies, suffered acutely; some towns were rendered totally uninhabitable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Following the 1968 earthquake, the majority of Salemi’s residents moved the new, lower part of town. Photograph: Felix Bazlagette

In Salemi, the majority of the population moved to the new lower part of town and continued their lives, leaving the beautiful old town – which includes a Norman fort, a winding Arab-style street structure and numerous grand 17th-century buildings – largely in ruins. And so it stayed until 1984, when the then mayor, Giuseppe Cascio, hatched what would prove to be a controversial plan to revive it.

He enlisted the help of the Sicilian architect Roberto Collovà, and a now-legendary Portuguese architect, Álvaro Siza. Siza had made a name for himself in the 1960s for working with local contexts: his public swimming pools, for example, were set within rocks on the shoreline, following their contours. His understated projects stood in contrast to the monolithic modernism of the mid-20th century: vast Le Corbusier-inspired developments that followed a similar script whether they were in Marseille or Mexico City. For Siza, architecture was not about these “privileged forms and materials” but “the problems of the people and their environment”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gibellina, a town close to Salemi, which was destroyed by the earthquake in January 1968. Photograph: Alamy

With Salemi, Siza had a whole town on which to test his context-specific approach – a difficult task in an architecturally proud country where the phrase dov’era e com’era (where it was and how it was) has come to express the desire of many Italians to rebuild damaged buildings exactly as they were.

In Salemi, by contrast, Siza chose “where it was, but not how it was”, says Professor Maurizio Oddo, an academic at the Kore University of Enna. “In terms of design methodology, it was totally innovative. The mentality of the project was to adapt to the reality of the problems created by the earthquake.”

If you speak to people who are 70 or 80, they say that they made a mistake. But younger people think it's beautiful Local bar owner Fabrizio Internicola

Many parts of the old town, including ancient paths and steps, lay in ruins. Siza and Collovà envisioned a plan to bring the old town back to life using understated interventions in public spaces. They rebuilt steps outside houses, created new covered paths between different districts of the town that had previously been unconnected, and created an entirely new piazza within the ruins of the old Chiesa Madre. The work used a muted, straight-edged style, made of local white stone. It was subtly different from older buildings in the town so that the traumatic damage of the earthquake could be quietly expressed in the new architecture. “A multitude of small details disappear into the design as a whole,” wrote the influential architecture critic François Burkhardt in praise of the project. For him, the architects had captured “the spirit of the ancient place”, without losing the “courage to express it anew”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The controversial piazza in what was Salemi’s the 17th-century Chiesa Madre. Photograph: Felix Bazalgette

The most striking element is the new central piazza of Salemi, on the ruins of the old church. The two architects deemed this a work of “subtraction” rather than construction: they cleared rubble, removed unstable parts of the old church and stabilised what remained, leaving pillars from the old building standing in the square to show what had previously been there. “At the time, this was revolutionary,” says Oddo. “As a building, as a piazza, it functions in a totally different way in respect to the original.” Rather than building a replica of the original church, they created an entirely new space that serves as a vivid memorial of the old – but where children can play, and concerts and events are frequently held.

The approach proved controversial, particularly among some of the older inhabitants of Salemi, who remain nostalgic for the original grandeur of the Chiesa Madre. But their ire is largely directed at the authorities who allowed the damaged church to fall to ruins in the 15 years following the earthquake, rather than Siza and Collovà, who based their project on extensive local consultation. Collovà lived only an hour and a half’s drive away, and was a frequent visitor over the decade that the works took place: an important factor in preventing the renovation works from being seen as a foreign imposition.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pictures of Salemi’s past on the wall of a bar. Some of the town’s older inhabitants remain nostalgic for the original grandeur of the Chiesa Madre. Photograph: Felix Bazalgette

Walking around Salemi, the scope of the project becomes clear. While some parts of the old town still remain in ruins and cordoned off – one ripped-open house reveals bathroom tiles and an electrical plug frozen in time since 1968 – those recuperated by Siza and Collovà are filled with children laughing and playing, while locals sip drinks in the piazza at nightfall.

The old town, however, remains underpopulated compared with the bustling new town on the hill below. The current mayor, Domenico Venuti, is attempting to attract a younger and more diverse population to its winding streets.

50 years since Sicily's earthquake, an urban disaster of a different kind Read more

Yet for all its success, Siza and Collovà’s project remains unfinished. Siza has blamed this on the competing visions of successive town mayors: Cascio lost his job as mayor soon after commissioning the project, and his successors either couldn’t or wouldn’t find the money to finish it. Many of their interventions have also been altered: handrails added to staircases, or drainage channels funnelled in a different direction using crude plaster. “You see those stairs,” says local architect and politician Vito Scalisi, pointing out Siza’s work. “Beautiful. But quite difficult to climb.”

Internicola, the bar owner, has nothing but praise for the restorations. “If you speak to people who are 70 or 80, they say that they made a mistake, they should have rebuilt the church in 1968,” he says. “But younger people like me, who grew up in the square, think it’s beautiful. It means the earthquake is part of our history.”

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