DALLA TERRA E DALL’ ACQUA
The Piaggio district is a part of the historic center of Gravina, visible both from a glimpse in Piazza Benedetto XIII and from a distance along a stretch of the railway. It is one of the city’s medieval neighborhoods and still offers a rich variety of evocative views. Arches and houses appear to chase and lean on each other, as if seeking mutual protection; wide staircases, intimate squares, and narrow streets encapsulate a long and poignant human history, shaped by silent figures: farmers, diggers, laborers—the humble protagonists who have written some of the city’s most evocative stories here.
The Piaggio district, along with Fondovico, began to decline as the civitas developed. Despite its near-total abandonment, the Piaggio district is home to the small church of Santa Lucia. Behind it, three niches carved into the tuff rock serve as reminders of a now-collapsed rock-hewn church, possibly destroyed by natural ground subsidence or an earthquake.
The proposed but never realized artistic intervention aimed to flood some of the narrow streets with ultramarine blue, a color that does not naturally belong to the earth tones of the area. Taking advantage of the slope, the color would spread, seeping into cracks and crevices, brushing against walls, crossing barriers, and flowing into the ravine, leaving a trace visible even from the train—prominent yet not permanent, destined to fade, much like the district itself if left in neglect.
In this way, art would serve to highlight presence, underscore value, and rescue from oblivion.
