Librino like Versailles: the latest project by patron Antonio Presti

‘Librino is like Versailles… Where there is rubbish, we’ll plant roses.’ Antonio Presti, founder of Fiumara d’Arte, says this to a group of visitors standing in front of the Porta della Bellezza. We are on the outskirts of the outskirts of Catania, in the neighbourhood that almost everyone now considers a symbol of crime, decay, corruption and the Mafia. Not Antonio Presti, though – quite the opposite. The project stems from a practical need: to tidy up the flowerbeds, plant flowers and find people to look after them after the festival.

Librino was meant to be the neighbourhood of dreams and renewal, a neighbourhood on a human scale. It turned out to be none of these things. In 1970, Catania City Council commissioned Kenzo Tange’s architectural practice to design a new town on agricultural land to the south of the city centre: 60,000 inhabitants spread over 420 hectares. The design included amenities, pedestrian routes, a network of green spaces and a 31-hectare park. Tange wanted to ‘blend the human environment with the natural one’. The plan was only partially implemented. The cooperative housing blocks were flanked by large social housing blocks; several facilities remained unfinished. The Moncada Theatre, contracted out in the 1980s and officially opened on several occasions, has never opened to the public. The former ‘Concrete Palace’, redeveloped as Torre Leone, has once again become the focus of residents’ complaints due to structural problems. These are two examples of just how difficult it is to complete a project and then maintain it. Librino does not constitute an autonomous statistical unit. The Sixth Municipality, which also includes other neighbourhoods, is home to 54,000 people: 29.1 per cent are under 24 years of age. The employment rate stands at 37.2 per cent; 42.9 per cent of young people aged between 15 and 29 are neither in education nor in employment. These figures relate to the entire area, not just Librino.

Presti has been working in Librino for over twenty years. Through the TerzOcchio – Meridiani di Luce project, artists and poets have been invited into schools. The children modelled the terracotta tiles intended for the wall that runs through the neighbourhood. In 2009, that wall became the Porta della Bellezza (Gate of Beauty). This was followed by the Cantico di Librino, the Porta delle Farfalle (Gate of Butterflies), the Porta dei Sogni (Gate of Dreams) and the other works that make up MAGMA, the open-air museum. Presti asks the children to leave their mark on the artwork. ‘Mayors and headteachers come and go, but beauty is always the constant,’ he says. The pupils grow up and later find their own children’s work on the walls too: this is his vision of human regeneration. Yet he is well aware of the gap between art and the neighbourhood’s needs. As early as 2023, he pointed out that in Librino, ‘the roads, the sewers and social services’ come first. The garden brings art into a practical issue: who cleans and maintains public spaces.

Il mecenate Antonio Presti

In May 2025, Presti announced a carpet of flowers alongside the installations, conceived in its own right as a work of art. He proposed the initiative ‘You are as beautiful as a flower’ to schools, asked nurseries to donate plants, and even envisaged a cyclamen lane and a rose-lined avenue. The most challenging part was contained in the same announcement. A tile remains on the wall; a rose needs water, pruning and attention to the changing seasons. Presti aimed, and still aims, to train the residents of Librino in landscape conservation and to entrust them with its upkeep through a co-operative. The ‘dream of flowers’ thus also encompasses a job opportunity and an invitation to look after communal spaces. The first project to come to fruition is the Sant’Agata Rose Garden, inaugurated on 30 January. Eleven ‘candelore’ – the votive candles of the guilds that play a central role in the patron saint’s festival – passed through Librino for the first time. Presti described it as ‘a political act’: even religious devotion affirms that Librino belongs to Catania. In presenting the rose garden, she asked the children to plant roses and look after them: a lesson in caring for what is fragile, from plants to communal spaces. The rose garden is set to extend throughout the neighbourhood. A technical and scientific committee, led by architects Tindara Crisafulli and Alessandra Romeo, will work on the landscape.

The local council has made the rose garden areas available free of charge and carried out work on the lighting and water supply. In April, an agreement – which supplements the protocol of July 2024 – extended the collaboration with the Foundation to the spaces surrounding the artworks: flowerbeds, roundabouts and green spaces. According to the press release, the Foundation will be responsible for cleaning and maintaining the green spaces, whilst seeking sponsors. The local council will provide technical support and connections to the utility networks. Presti summed up this phase in three words: ‘care, stewardship, participation’. This is where Versailles ceases to be merely an image. Librino was founded on the promise of a vast green network. Presti is starting afresh with the existing spaces, one flowerbed and one roundabout at a time, involving schools, families and residents who could take on the maintenance professionally. A rose planted during a festival will need someone to look after it in the months that follow. There is still a long way to go between the Sant’Agata Rose Garden and the garden envisaged for the whole neighbourhood. No details have been made public regarding the total area, the number of roses to be planted or a timetable for extending the project. For now, the cooperative remains a project, which Presti confirms he intends to bring to fruition. The growth and maintenance of the garden depend on these steps.