Gibellina, Capital of Contemporary Art 2026
Detail
Great satisfaction for Gibellina, proclaimed ‘’Capital of Contemporary Art 2026‘’.
On the strength of its artistic and cultural identity, Gibellina Nuova, a small town on a panoramic hill in the area of Trapani, has not only been reborn like a Phoenix from the rubble of the 1968 earthquake, which destroyed the old town centre, but has done so by drawing on the pride of a community that has been able to reinvent itself.
The fruit of a far-sighted intuition of former mayor Ludovico Corrao, the reconstruction of Gibellina passes through the creativity of several world-famous contemporary artists: from Pietro Consagra, who installed the Porta del Belice (also known as the Stella di Consagra) there, to the works of Mario Schifano, Andrea Cascella, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Ludovico Quaroni, Mimmo Paladino, Franco Angeli, Franco Purini, Carla Accardi and Mimmo Rotella, to name but a few.
A collection of masterpieces that, over the years, has turned Gibellina’s urban space and landscape into a veritable open-air museum of Contemporary Art, so much so that it has earned the coveted title of ‘Capital of Contemporary Art 2026’.
An award that celebrates a city that is a symbol of cultural and architectural rebirth for the whole of Sicily, which from a tragic event was able to rise again and become an international reference point.
What to admire during a visit to Gibellina ‘’Capital of Contemporary Art‘’?
Let’s start at Baglio Di Stefano, where the Orestiadi Foundation, which organises the festival of the same name in Gibellina every year, has set up the Museum of Mediterranean Plots, one of the most important Contemporary Art collections in Italy.
The main works and installations of the Italian Transavanguardia are on display here, starting with Mimmo Paladino’s Salt Mountain and continuing with numerous international artists, including Beuys, Bob Wilson, Long and Briggs.
Among the ruins of Gibellina Vecchia stands Alberto Burri’s Grande Cretto, one of the world’s greatest works of land art: a gigantic monument to death, an eternal memory of the earthquake. A shroud stretched over a distant and painful memory.
Not to be missed, the Mother Church of Gibellina, designed in the 1970s by Ludovico Quaroni, the Civic Tower by Alessandro Mendini and the so-called ‘Square System’: the alignment of large spaces and architectural structures designed by Franco Purini and Laura Thermes, which winds around the Piazza del Comune, with the portico created by Vittorio Gregotti and Giuseppe Samonà.
In the countryside surrounding Gibellina, vines and olive trees remain the centuries-old guardians of rebirth, bearing witness to the simplicity of life that becomes a symbol. A tangible sign of the extraordinary cultural richness of Sicily, which celebrates this recognition together with the other great achievement that sees Agrigento ‘’Italian Capital of Culture 2025‘’.
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