The Famedio is a pantheon of Messina’s people and a shadow of the monument it once was. It must have towered like a Parthenon over the Strait of Messina. I can see it, a great white temple, an icon of the city. Yet, on approaching the monument’s steps, I perceive a large flat area with only capitals and truncated columns. The entire construction has been swept away. The earthquake certainly arrested a story, life, but the neglect and oblivion of subsequent years have deprived the Famedio and the culture of Messina.
The quantity of bronze and rusty iron decorations sprawled across the untended grass surface is distressing. Beneath my feet, I feel a constant presence of decorative and architectural features from monuments. Nature has regained the upper hand here.
I would like to have revealed how many cities, how many Messinas, are enclosed in this simulacrum. How many lives dissolved along with all their dreams and hopes but also the simpler, more human things that each one of us might do every day. All this prompted me to follow a path, one of many possible ones. I have constructed my story and I have narrated my encounters, the things I have seen and the voices I have heard.