Tales from an abandonment. The notion of memory between the town of Gibellina and the "cretto"

This paper examines the case study of old Gibellina (Sicily, Italy). In January 1968, the town was hit by a violent earthquake. The resulting devastation was so severe that central government authorities prohibited the inhabitants of Gibellina from returning to their homes, forcing them to move "en masse" to a different location. It is interesting to note how the scene of the disaster has come to be considered. The topic is the process of re-semanticization of the abandoned center and the connected memory processes. We observed and analyzed three steps: 1- the ruins, that generally embody not only a shared sense of loss, but also individual and collective memories of the place; 2- the building of Burri's Cretto, with all the evocative and semantic power of a monumental artwork; 3- the consecration to the "trauma site".