Grande Cretto

Destroyed by the earthquake that devastated Belice Valley in 1968, the town of Gibellina was rebuilt eleven kilometers away, while its ruins became the site of a land art project conceived by Alberto Burri. Grande Cretto is a memorial that contains and preserves, in both real and metaphorical terms, the trace of the past and of the life of the community that was cancelled by the earthquake.
The work, formally a monumental version of the Cretti that the artist developed in the seventies, extends along the slope of the hill, on the ruins of the city. The Cretto consists of twenty-two white concrete cubes that recall the structure of the underlying houses: a labyrinth that can be performed walking between the spaces that separate the blocks and evoke the streets of the old town.