Il Grande Cretto di Burri

Gibellina, 31st August

Gibellina is a comune in the province of Trapani, Sicily. Today, Gibellina has two identities; the first is the old town, Gibellina Vecchia, which was destroyed by the Belice earthquake in 1968. The second place is Gibellina Nuova, the new town that was constructed around 11km from the historic centre after the earthquake. The new town is inhabited and the old city has become an open air museum, a piece of land art created by Alberto Burri, to commemorate the 'quake.

I visited the new town first, and was quite moved by how soulless the place felt. There is very little in the centre other than housing and a few bars and churches. The entire periphery has been abandoned, presumably by residents of Gibellina who post-earthquake found this place poor compensation for the loss of their old centre. Several architects contributed to Gibellina Nuova to create exciting, innovative architecture throughout the city; the effect is an uncoordinated and eclectic mix of styles being constrained by a rigid grid structure. Public spaces are empty and streets are badly kept. Christopher Woodward, in his book In Ruins (2002) described the place as a 'bold and brand new town of apartment blocks spaced around playgrounds and public art. No one was visible, however; no one sat at the neat, gleaming tables outside the cafes. There was no visible life, no laughter...' I did not get quite the same sense of 'neat, gleaming tables' in a 'brand new' town; perhaps, even since 2002, Gibellina Nuova has become tired and worn.

With little to inspire interest in Gibellina Nuova, I continued up the mountain roads towards the signposted Ruderi di Gibellina - the ruins of the old town. The old centre is surprisingly far from the new, and much higher into the mountains along considerably worse roads. There are very few houses or people in the area and when you finally get the first glimpse of the ruins it feels in a very remote location. Woodward also describes the first sight: 'a vast, shallow flow of white concrete. It was in the form of a triangle, pointing down the slope as if it were an avalanche petrified in mid-flow. In such a lush valley the pristine concrete was surreal, dazzlignly white in the midday Sicilian sun.'

The old buildings in the town, all destroyed by the 'quake, were levelled to height of around 10ft, boarded up, and then encased in concrete. It is very eerie walking along the old paths of the city between these blocks, as you have the sense of a town in scale but without the height. Views are limited over the tall concrete walls until you climb the hill, so it feels like a maze. And its so lonely you can imagine you might never encounter another soul here for days, a feeling that is almost sinister the deeper you move into the place; as Woodward says, 'I knocked on the walls, wondering if the dead were entombed inside. It was the first sound in the valley since we had arrived.' But even so, the place is strangely beautiful and the immense scale and meaning behind the piece is certainly awe inspiring, and quite moving.