Victims reaped by cholera memorial and Saint Francis Belvedere

The project area is located in Favara, a town on the southern coast of Sicily, and covers
approximately 10.000 square meters above a hill to the east of the historical city center.
This hill stands to a higher level than the rest of the town, with a difference in height of
about 40 meters, on top of which there are a belvedere, supported by a stone retaining
wall, and a square. This area is a fundamental part of the relationship system that
constitutes the Favara landscape, allowing visual continuity with the cathedral and with the
thirteenth-century Chiaramonte castle. Currently the belvedere above the hill and the
square behind it can only be reached by cars because of the slope of the road, a feature
that has made it isolated from the town. These characteristics have suggested one of the
two project themes: the belvedere promenade. This idea foresees the modification of the
ascent, through the insertion of a parallel pedestrian ascent path, through olive trees,
which slowly allows to reach the level of the belvedere also to those who move in a
wheelchair.
The historical analysis of this area has also laid the groundwork for the second project
theme: the memorial. Under the square there is a huge circular concrete tank which,
during the cholera epidemic of the nineteenth-century, was improperly used as a mass
grave to contain the contagion and stem the disastrous situation of the cemeteries. For this
reason the path is also the ribbon that connects the belvedere to the square, embracing
the memorial: a large and deep crater in the ground where it is possible to descend
through a claustrophobic circular ramp at the end of which opens a wide space that by
contrast contains life: a ginkgo biloba tree.