Gibellina and the identity of community. Brandi, Burri and the conservation of the 'ruins'

The construction of the new Gibellina is the starting point to reflect on the importance of memory. The construction of the city resulted from the destruction of the Belice earthquake of 1968. What remains of the old city destroyed by the earthquake has been transformed from a pour of concrete into a work of art: the "Cretto" by Alberto Burri. The new site arose from the design of Marcello Fabbri was the result of experimentation for the city of the future. The citizens of Gibellina had lost their place of origin, their "sacred pole". The contribution aims to highlight the links between past and future in the history of a place that pass through the relationships between the urban and social fabric in the transmission of the memories and identity of a people. After several decades, it is possible to evaluate the emotional effects of the choices made and reflect on the strategies that can be applied to heal the obvious gap between design and actual use of a place. The comparison between the settlement rituals of the nomadic tribe of the Omaha people based on the continuity of a symbolic object, the sacred pole, and the loss of the “genius loci” of Gibellina caused by the occultation of the macere, allows to identify an interesting and unprecedented parallelism in the re-foundation symbolic of the settlement principle which is at the basis of the rebirth of a community. As Torsello and Boscarino suggests, the memory of a people passes through its monuments. Etymologically it can be traced back to the Latin verb “monere” that is to remember, emphasizing the act of admonishing, warning, remembering the history imprinted in the voluntary action of building for the community.