Catania, between nature and artifice: the lava flow of 1669 and via Plebiscito

The volcanic eruption of 1669 was the first in recorded history to reach the city of Catania. Around 2,500 years after its foundation, the eruption devastated the settlement on which the city had been built due to its duration and magnitude. The only obstacle to the lava flow was the city’s medieval fortification walls, which prevented it from being completely erased from the map. Encircling Catania from west to south, the lava flow of 1669 solidified the city’s historical footprint, even when the walls, which had survived the event, were no longer needed. This occurred about a hundred years before it happened in other fortified cities. However, the city walls not only provide a physical link between the historic and expanding city of Catania, but the material compromising their survival also forms their mould. The first act of settlement on the rough ground that suddenly descends into the city is the excavation of a ring road, Via Plebiscito, designed to reconnect Catania with the surrounding countryside and remove it from the isolation into which it had fallen. It is carved into the still hot lava in an attempt to follow the circuit of the walls. This is a contemporary necessity compared to the effort of working on a basalt bench of about ten metres. The contribution attempts to reveal the inherent relationship between nature and artifice in Catania, which operates on a schedule of rare complexity. It identifies significant points that express how the relationship between form and structure in the Etnean capital cannot be separated from geology and geography.