It was January 15, 1968 when a violent earthquake of magnitude 6.5 devastated the Belice Valley, razing the fourteenth-century city of Gibellina and some neighboring villages. Faced with the total destruction of the town, the authorities decided not to rebuild the town on the same site, but to found Gibellina Nuova a few kilometers away. The old site of Gibellina was abandoned, thousands of families saw their lives change forever, the economy, almost exclusively agricultural, suffered serious repercussions and the inhabitants were relocated. The new Gibellina became the laboratory of an open-air museum: artists, architects, and intellectuals were called to gather from Mario Schifano to Arnaldo Pomodoro, from Mimmo Paladino to Leonardo Sciascia to help give a new face to the city that was being rebuilt.
Alberto Burri, the great artist who anticipated movements such as Arte Povera and New Realism, through the use of new and avant-garde materials such as tar, iron, mold, wood, earth and glue for the creation of his material paintings, an exponent of that informal art that rejected figurative and abstract art in favor of a new communication of matter, boldly distanced himself from the "reconstructive" commitment of his famous colleagues.
With the 80.000 m15 Cretto Burri consigned to history the memory of the town that disappeared with the earthquake of 1968 January XNUMX
And he visionarily created the great Cretto on the urban rubble of the earthquake, a work extending over approximately 80 thousand square meters, composed of blocks of concrete on the ground, 1 meter and 60 high, and fractures two to three meters wide, as if to hand down to history the historical memory of the town disappeared under the rubble, so that no one would forget in the future the horror experienced by this wonderful corner of Sicily but at the same time to signify the vitality of a population struck over time by great tragedies but which has always been able to raise its head with the pride of its capacity for resilience.
Gibellina's proclamation as "Italian Capital of Contemporary Art" for the year 2026 for having "delivered to today's Italy an exemplary model of cultural intervention, based on values and actions that recognize art as a social function and culture as a common good, for its planning capacity to reactivate its extraordinary heritage of works, combining memory and future, conservation and enhancement, attention to the local and international ambition in the present; for its capacity to involve new generations and all citizens, questioning the wider territory on the basis of a common civic awareness", has inspired one of the greatest Italian chefs Pino Cuttaia, two Michelin stars with his restaurant La Madia in Licata, a true sanctuary of Mediterranean and Sicilian gastronomy of the highest, highest level, to create a dish dedicated to Burri's great Cretto, a true tribute to the strength of rebirth and the value of memory, thus sharing in his dish the intuition and values of the great painter and sculptor of the City of Castle.
A profound interpreter of Sicilian identity, Cuttaia has always told the story of his land through his cuisine, weaving together flavors, landscapes and stories because Cuttaia is tied to this land like the root of a centuries-old oak. In his stories and therefore in his cuisine, philosophy of life, ancient customs, old traditions, gestures, flavors, sensations, memories are mixed, which he manages to blend into a harmonious synthesis that projects itself into a concept of cuisine that looks to the new, surprising you like an illusionist with his effects. “In love with his land – the Michelin Guide defines him – he avoids artifice to go straight to the heart of the raw material, sometimes with more modern techniques, such as mozzarella and tomato served at the beginning of a meal of great lightness, other times with more traditional methods: the black pig of the Nebrodi with a Sunday tomato-based sauce is a valid example”.
Cuttaia: I wanted to transform that tragedy into a sweet gesture, into a caress so as not to forget
And we find this love in his homage to Burri, a symbolic dessert, a gastronomic gesture that celebrates the strength of rebirth and the value of memory. For the chef, the landscape is not just a backdrop, but a constant inspiration, a heritage to be told at the table. "Those who cook can draw from a beloved landscape and recreate it in a dish. This is also a cultural gesture," he says.
And it is from this rebirth that Cuttaia found inspiration for a dessert full of meaning and that bears the same name as the wounded place: an almond cream on sponge cake with almond liqueur, topped with an authentic scale reproduction of the Cretto, made with white almond paste. "The Cretto," adds the chef, "is a sign in the earth, a scar that tells what happened. I wanted to transform that tragedy into a sweet gesture, a caress to not forget."
La Madia restaurant
Filippo Re Capriata Course, 22,
Phone: 0922 771443
Reservations: thefork.it
