COSENZA Territorial marketing in reverse? Or a guerrilla marketing operation with a social background with a vague Calvinist echo, even if what is “invisible” like the cities of Italo (1972) is only the progress of the works? For a couple of days, if you venture into the historic center – in addition to the reborn Casa delle Culture on the main street, in fact, around the corner there are dilapidated buildings and landfills – you will find suggestive messages that on the one hand shine a light on the unfinished, on the other they stimulate a new idea of using public spaces: “Unliveable cities” is a campaign but also a sort of permanent observatory that the organizers of the Aghia Sophia Fest have created to launch one of the talks (with Giorgio De Finis, at the end of May), «a series of communicative actions – they explain the activists – which involved the planetarium, ex Jolly and Piazzetta Toscano. «The intent is to spark a public discussion, which on Friday 24 May becomes truly shared and concerning the fate of the public spaces of this city».
The fences that delimit public spaces “denied” to the community become tazebaos with imaginative phrases that “Cosentinize” literary passages.
Planetary
Reappeared in the city’s political news in recent days (a demonstration by centre-right councilors first stimulated a reflection by former mayor Mario Occhiuto then a questionable statement from one of the city councilors closest to the mayor Franz Caruso), the Planetarium is currently the most evident symbol of the suspended city: very high potential for a unique structure in the south and among the few in Europe, a running-in phase with excellent takings and yet currently abandoned and vandalised. The prospect is to start again with new surveillance systems and the hypothesis of private intervention to be entrusted with management, perhaps in tandem with Unical who has already meritoriously taken care of the scientific-popularization part. «So we were able to see the stars again?», the boys of Aghia Sophia joke, updating the last verse of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
Former Jolly hotel
The statue of Alarico, the same one that symbolizes Cosenza on the motorway signs, sadly observes the confluence and fortunately for him has his back to the (formerly) Hotel Jolly, now reduced to ruins and surrounded by a fence which – in protecting the area – does a bivouac place as well as a large public toilet (in the absence of actual ones) outdoors, right under the Corso Plebiscito overlook, one of the most popular with photography lovers. At night, the instagrammable lights of the San Domenico complex are the counterpart to the ugliness that prevails where Crati and Busento meet. The Alaric Museum remains in the renderings for nowwhile the dream book of the possible reuse of cream-colored parallelepiped famous for not even having a balcony it was updated a few months ago with Mayor Caruso’s idea of making it a “terrace on the confluence” to be returned to the people of Cosenza and offered to tourists. «What a treasure (of Alarico) you are…» is Antonello Venditti’s quote for this non-place so crystallized as to be almost museumized in its gloomy static nature.
Piazzetta Toscano
The old toponymy plaque is chipped and seems to be “challenged” by a mocking For Sale sign that seems to have been placed there on purpose. And to say that this urban rebirth project was also rewarded in past years. We are in the heart of the historic centre, behind the Cathedral, in the open space overlooked by the pointed iron and glass roof – a “cage” according to the Aghia Sophia activists – which, also in this case, by hiding protection: in this case, the imposing Roman walls in opus reticulatum of the Brettii metropolis (second half of the 4th century BC). But the splendor of the mosaics and the vestiges of a large domus located in the commercial district on the left bank of the Crati are today only a memory: the degradation of the area is all the more striking if you consider that it is a stone’s throw from Corso Telesio, between the National Library and the Archiepiscopal with the diocesan museum. «Following the archaeological discovery, the area was covered by an architectural structure in iron and glass, which marked the beginning of its degradation, preventing ordinary maintenance as well as use» noted FAI, including the site among those reported in the “Places of the heart”. Today it is at best a place of bile, one of many in Cosenza.
Let’s talk about it together
These and other non-places will be discussed at the 4th edition of “Aghia Sophia Fest – Abitare Futuri Imaginari” on Friday 24 May on the Lungofiume: “Unliveable cities – The future of urban spaces” is the title of the debate with Giorgio De Finis, who he will discuss it with Giuseppe Bornino. Anthropologist, artist and photographer, De Finis created the Maam (Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove Metropoliz, Rome) and founded the widespread Dif Museum in Formello: in Cosenza he will talk about how cities change and how art can improve them livability.
