CALTANISSETTA – It will be inaugurated tomorrow 2 May 2024at 4.30 pm, on Rosario Assunto urban park. Upon the proposal of the municipal council and the right request of the “Rosario Assunto” association, the green area, until a few weeks ago known and identified as “Balate park” like the neighborhood to which it belongs, was named after philosopher “Rosario Assunto”.
A park dedicated to the philosopher Rosario Assunto
The choice of dedicate this urban park to the scholar from Nisse, then transferred out of Sicily for work reasons, precisely 30 years after his death, is dictated by the intrinsic message of the thought conveyed. Professor Assunto, a point of reference not only in Italy but also internationally for his “garden philosophy”, contested contemporary society which saw “the landscape of memory and imagination reduced to pure and simple space of geometry”. For him, the replacement of gardens, squares, historic buildings with roundabouts, flowerbeds, “functional” and anonymous buildings, caused the disappearance of the “eachness” of places: “a street, a square, is what it is, and not another , because it is qualified by the appearance of the buildings that flank or delimit it, as well as by the route or geometric configuration”.
The green area, of almost 9 hectares, is owned by the Municipality of Caltanissetta. AND a park that is always open and accessible to the population, has an area inside for Parcours with tables with specifications for carrying out physical activity with equipment installed in the place, but also leaves ample space for free exercise. It can be covered at a slow pace for a pleasant walk, at a brisk pace with a run, or on the two wheels of a trekking bicycle. A place to live in solitude, welcomed by the “bubble” of silence with the sounds of nature, but also accompanied by friends and acquaintances, where you can have a picnic or live together with your pet. The space in the countryside “for everyone and for everyone” that we still need especially after the post-pandemic air crisis.
In the area also equipped with a well for irrigationrecently the subject of participatory planning activities for the planting of new essences and soon also of a citrus grove, a video surveillance system to protect the spaces with the aim of discouraging any acts of vandalism or crimes such as, for example, the abandonment of waste.
The park, in addition to the valley part accessible from via delle Calcare and therefore from via Capitano Vittorio Achille Di Martino, also extends upstream with a landscaped area also accessible from via delle Calcare and, therefore, from via La Pira. Furthermore, 12 lots measuring 48.00 m2 have already been located, which with a subsequent tender will be assigned to citizens for the creation of urban vegetable gardens.
The inauguration will be attended by the municipal council, the director of the III Urban Planning-Mobility Directorate of the municipality Giuseppe Dell’Utri, the president of the Rosario Assunto association, Salvatore Farina. Furthermore, the city authorities, environmental associations, interested municipal councils and possible users of the urban park for educational, social and cultural activities were invited to participate.
“Recreating contact with nature is fundamental – declared the municipal administration regarding the use of the park -; in Caltanissetta we are fortunate to have at our disposal a green area with vast biodiversity in which we can immerse ourselves, forgetting that we are in the city center. Just as Rosario Assunto reiterated, we must experience the Park as a privileged space of dialogue between man and Nature, because to contemplate the landscape we must experience it”.
