L’AQUILA – More than eight hectares, practically double the Sun Park, but with an even higher environmental and social value. With its cousin Collemaggio it is the only real urban park in the city, but few people frequent it now, they tell us in the town, in Coppito, one of the most populous neighborhoods in the western area and a few minutes from other major city polarities such as the hospital, the university, commercial areas and neighborhoods such as Pettino.
After all, just drive a few kilometers and Murata Gigotti seems like a distant memory, no one hears him or keeps him in mind for a walk or an outing, so much so that they prefer a car trip to the market car park in Piazza d’Armi.
Inside the park you can see very few people, to the delight of my dog who enjoys the area. There is not what you would expect in any case, and not what you see elsewhere: in the Parco del Castello it seems like being under the arcades in the golden times and in the Parco del Sole it is difficult to find a place.
There is no indication to get there and not even a sign at the entrance, as well as no regulations on how to use it. Is it a public or private area? Are there entrance times? And who knows. Is there a dog area? Are there times in which we can untie the dogs and guarantee them what in more attentive countries is the obligatory freedom to be granted to them in order to grow up balanced? (Off-leash hours are common abroad in public parks.)
Murata Gigotti hit the headlines after the earthquake, as the site of a large tent city. But the Gigottis’ old private area had already received attention from the municipal administration the year before, in 2008, when the Municipality took lease the building which overlooks the park and the road that crosses Coppito.
After the earthquake, the far-sighted idea of proceeding also with the large estate and protecting it from other buildings. A few years later came the expropriations (and some disputes with the owners) and the Murata Gigotti Park becomes reality. It seems like a dream and the sign of a city that, despite the earthquake, is modernizing with suburbs equipped with services and opportunities.
Plus there’s the farmhouse, which became the first headquarters of the district and in the following years of the Pro Loco, of the civil protection group, but also of the senior center and other associations. A library will be created, which today ended up in a container, a MTB school, a summer camp (today those closest to it are forced into other very narrow areas) and many other initiatives that try to attract people to the new large public space in the city. The response in those years was important and Murata Gigotti teemed with life at every hour of the day. The response was also immediate after the Amatrice earthquake when it was possible to set up the wall to make hundreds of meals.
But over the years, new disputes also arose regarding the management of the farmhouse, and between those who managed it and the administration which demanded payment of utilities and so on. The rest is news, the litigation goes badly. However, law and justice are not always synonymous and everyone is the one who loses in this case. In fact, the social and cultural value of the place as well as its economic value are in the wind because certain social needs have certainly not disappeared and the Municipality is now forced to encourage them worth their weight in gold in places of little value.
The rest is news from recent years, with the farmhouse returning to the owners who sold it to a private individual for a restaurant business, while the park remained public and was also renovated with the usual fitness courses that no one asked for or uses.
Today in Murata Gigotti there are no monuments, services or civic buildings which are essential to strengthen the public character of an urban area. The nascent private initiatives risk creating even more confusion (and conflicts?) in the spatial relationship if there is not a clear investment in the vocation of public space on the other side.
We could start at least with the bathrooms, now absent in what is still, in theory, the main civil protection area of the area. Murata Gigotti is a place of extraordinary beauty, which should be made known with adequate indications and promotional activities. In the summer it could easily meet the outdoor living needs of hundreds of people every day.
