Ravenna does not give up Eni’s choice to demolish the Hamon Towers and continues to carry out his protest. Making their voice heard through an open letter was the Ravenna Coordination “For the Climate – Out of the Fossil”, Italy Our section of Ravenna, Potere al Popolo Ravenna, Ravenna in Comune, Collettivo La Comune, “Chico” Mendes club of Bologna, National Safe Work Network. Their request? the boycott of the Ravenna Festival.
The criticism of Muti
«Numerous times Maestro Muti has made his voice heard on cultural issues of importance for our country, receiving applause and recognition. – the opponents explain – The last one, against “cancel culture” on the occasion of a not exactly “politically correct” phrase in “Un Ballo in Maschera”. “I am in favor of dialogue on a past that should not be erased, but discussed”, declared the Maestro».
The group criticizes the Maestro’s choice to adapt to silence and to support ENI in its choice to demolish the towers:
«Well, when it is not words that are censored, but extraordinary artefacts of the twentieth-century industrial heritage which were one of the identifying symbols of modernity in Ravenna; when, with an Easter blitz, without a single appraisal being shown, using as cabinet paper the PUG Urban Plan long participated by the citizens, voted by the Municipal Council and signed by the Mayor, even the Master adapts to silence.”
«Not a single word since Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, who also, in the past, had clearly expressed herself in favor of protection. For this reason, in recent weeks a heartfelt request for help has been addressed to them in the press. – continue from Italia Nostra – The former SAROM Hamon towers were called “sound chimneys”, precisely because of the very singular and magnificent acoustics determined by their shape, and for the majestic scenographic impact.
An ideal and futuristic venue for music and culture: how many wonderful concerts, how many shows, how many messages of friendship, hope and redemption – even from the past of pollution and death – could have been launched from inside the towers, from earth to sky, if only a few courageous voices of those who “contano” had risen to ask for mercy!»
ENI’s dominance in the territory
«Not even the position taken by the Order of Architects of Raven, they as courageous as many others, was enoughna: Mayor, Port Authority, Superintendency, all agree in allowing or even irreverently applauding their destruction. The Hamon towers were destroyed without any plausible reason, with a gratuitous and indelible disfigurement to Ravenna and to many citizens: the shame of a city that was the cradle of cultures, seat of the first Superintendence of Italy and source of the first Italian law for the protection of the landscape, takes the form of this arrogant defeat».
«Above all, the main sponsor of the Ravenna Festival, ENI has dominated every instrument of democratic government of the territory – they continue from Italia nostra Against the Ravenna Festival – the PUG – and of debate, every request for rethinking and salvation for at least one of the two. Elsewhere recovered, here destroyed. ENI, which has taken so much from our lands in over seventy years, a state-owned company with multi-billion profits, did not want to listen, and no one who could, spoke».
«The protection of the Hamon towers would have represented a concrete gesture with which to guarantee the city and its port a resource to be exploited, a unique and extraordinary testimonial, cultural, architectural and technical heritage, and consequently it would also have guaranteed the reclamation of the soil contaminated from the former SAROM refinery which is currently incomplete; lands that will soon become public property, acquired with public money by the Port Authority. Let us remember that the towers were manufactured for the cooling and recovery of water and did not contain traces of asbestos or other pollutants».
No to the Ravenna Festival
«Tired of ephemeral staging, – they conclude – we invite all citizens who care about material cultural heritage to give a strong signal and to disdain participation in the new edition of the Ravenna Festival, supported as always by ENI funds.».
Read all about the Torri Hamon case
