I’ve been told that the first thing that strikes you when you arrive in Catania is the blackness of the city. I had never stopped to think about that before having grown up in the city. Its colours were part of everyday life. I only thought about it when I was chatting to a Spanish friend while I was staying in Edinburgh (I like to put that in as geography can be funny at times). He said, “Catania, what an ugly city. I went there but I’ll never go back.” I was dismayed. I am fully aware of all its defects but I’m still profoundly in love with my city. Enough to remain attached to it even when I could have flown away.
I asked my Spanish friend to explain himself. “It’s a dark city,” he said “with all those black palazzos and those black streets. They’re depressing.” Before he visited Catania, he had already been to Ortigia and Syracuse. The historical centre of Ortigia is of an unparalleled whiteness. A white so pure it’s blinding. Ortigia is like a terrace opening out onto the sea. Practically everything in Catania is just the opposite. It is not surprising then, if you’ve just come from somewhere so different, that the main city around Etna makes a different impression. “And then, to tell the truth,” continued my Spanish friend, “I really didn’t understand the point of that elephant in the main piazza.” I thought this story about the ugliness and darkness of my hometown Catania over for a while. I’ve come to the conclusion that, in all reality, my Spanish friend didn’t take a proper look. I understood that he hadn’t stayed there long enough. In actual fact, Catania is dark because it’s as black as the volcanic lava which it rises out of. When Etna erupts, it’s red and incandescent. But as it cools, it becomes extremely hard and pitch black. We, the people of Catania, excel in transforming our misfortune into opportunity. We’ve used volcanic rock to build our palazzos which natural catastrophe has, from time to time, destroyed. Catania is black because it is made of lava. When we rebuild, we keep it that way because it’s part of the city’s identity. And why should we try to erase it?
Piazza Duomo, Via Etnea, Via Crociferi, these sites embody the city and are built with material from the “muntagna” as the people of Catania call Mount Etna. For us, it’s a given that the volcano is female. She has taken every opportunity to wreak devastation on us. And every time we patiently put the city back together. Better than it was before. There is one thing, for example, that we often tend to forget. Catania, as seen today, is built in a style that has a name all of its own. It’s called “Sicilian Baroque” and its strong personality reflects that of Catania itself. An earthquake in 1693 raised to the ground everything that it could. It’s always seemed to me that the palazzos built afterwards were given an imposing style as a kind of challenge. It’s as though they were saying, “What are you looking at? Does this stuff look like it will ever fall down?”
So far it’s held up and it’s there. Yes, of course it is, thanks to the mutability of that lava stone we were talking about. But this stone is also full of meanings hidden within its appearance. . For example, I discovered a few days ago that the façades of the churches in Catania have curves. You just need to know how to read them. If the façade curves outwards, the church is dedicated to a male figure. If the façade instead curves inwards, it means the church is dedicated to a female figure. I was told by an expert on the subject that it is all a question of iconography. The mother’s womb on one hand and masculine exuberance on the other. A perfect fit. Once I’d heard about it, I went looking for examples throughout the city’s streets. Two examples I found were the church of the Collegiata in Via Etnea and that of San Michele ai Bianchi in Via Vittorio Emanuele. It goes without saying they are beautiful to look at in their own right without thinking too much about their architectural curves.