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You go up from the plain and from the citrus
orchard, stretched out with thick green, with yellow and orange sprays, in the sun and
behind, far away, the sea. You climb fast, and the mountain with an isolated sharp tip,
that before, from the bottom, seemed so remote and almost inaccessible, becomes a
landscape, and then an extreme frame, of an inhabited framed, from the deep V of the other
two hills.
But, before entering in
Centuripe, look on your right, on the side of the street. You can easily recognize the
bricks and the antique vaulted ovens, emerge from the buttress from the high ground that
goes down up to asphalt. Because, here from time, have lived and have worked the masters
of the ceramic art work, so antique that the Greeks represent only a certain period, and
not the first.
From the town the view and the
landscape are extraorindinary. From the extreme point - because the map of Centuripe is a
star with five points - that watches towards south, there is, further the plain of
Catania, the sea. At the east, al di la' of the broad valley of citrus orchard, Etna
occupies a massive visual, near is cut a little above the base of the clear boundary of
Adrano, whereas, at west, al di la', at the other end of the town that over looks a cliff,
their houses. The theory of hills and mountains of internal Sicily, with it's infinite and
immutable sensation.
Centuripe is, and remains,
nevertheless, as well as a town that is sheltered high upon the valley and the sea, an
inextinguishable mine of archaeological findings. For decades, from the friable land and
the steep of her mountains have been digged valuables that belong to a simple past. In the
heart of the city, under the roadbed, of a road bridge, was uncovered an important Roman
building, still to be put into full light. It's enough to visit the antiquarian - because
the museum, destinated to gather, how much luck permits, that the uncovered treasures
remains at Centuripe. At the moment it's a new building, but not yet utilized - to
realize, what type of variety of culture that they succede during the history in this
territory.
So, when you go out into the
narrow streets of the town, you'll see all in a different light, it will seem as if you
are at a provisional stage, that covers most deep and infinite roots, of how much you
never happened to think. The pleasant farmer museum serves to bring again in this land of
Sicily, the Sicily of the mountains, of the hard work of life, hidden simple and Spartan,
yesterday's Sicily and not of centuries ago. But the centuries return to make feel their
presence, as soon as you come down to waterlily, well-disposed and patient, in love of the
history, that are bringing again into light, astride of the river that comes down between
the two peaks on which Centuripe leans on.
 And this alternation you'll find it everywhere, wherever the past appears under
or near an uncertain present, a present that loses all importance, just opposite of the
immanence of the centuries in which this town was theater of an intense and rich life, a
life in which art was daily, real. You might have a different feeling at Agrigento or at
Paestum. There, history is the power, history faces you, it dominates you from the stately
columns of the temples. Here, at Centuripe, you will realize that you are above history.
It's an extremely interesting history, because it's so old, it varies and is mixed. If you happen to cross any of the paths
that cut diagonally the mountains of Centuripe, looking from the bottom, the houses and
the town, you will notice that every rock becomes a probable finding. You will start
asking yourself, if that stone belongs to a Roman wall, if the pebble ahead didn't roll
from a prehistoric installation. Then you can understand - eventhough you do not share -
the frenzy that inclined hundreds of dilettante archaeologist to dig and dig. It was - and
is - easy to find small and big teasures.
A ride to Centuripe, is
like walking through the centuries, like walking - literally - upon the most antique
history. |
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