After 35 years of waiting, the Civic Archaeological Museum of Noto reopens

THE CIVIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF NOTO, BONFANTI REOPENS:
“LET’S FIND OUR ROOTS”

Ten exhibition halls, hundreds of finds ranging from the Prehistoric to the Middle Ages, two floors to visit and zero architectural barriers: since yesterday afternoon, Noto has rediscovered its Civic Archaeological Museum, set up in the lower part of the Monumental Complex of the Santissimo Salvatore – Ex Monastery of the Benedictines,in Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Yesterday the inauguration, in the presence of the Superintendent of Syracuse Salvatore Martinez and the director of the Archaeological Park of Syracuse, Eloro, Villa del Tellaro and Akrai Carlo Staffile. From tomorrow it will be open to the public.

“After so much effort and the involvement of many people and many institutions. A museum that had begun its activities in 1965, and then closed its doors definitively in 1986. So, 35 years have passed. I need and desire to thank all the people who have engaged in this long collective work: Superintendence, Archaeological Park, professionals and many other intermediate structures that have made the process less difficult, in addition to the workers and companies that have contracted out the works and services. It wasn’t easy, mind you, because it took a very delicate approach to a history of millennia that only competent figures have allowed us to reconstruct, with grafts also linked to new technology that will make a visit to the Museum more exciting. And I also consider myself lucky: if the local elections hadn’t been postponed, I wouldn’t have managed to inaugurate this creature of ours, our MuCiAN”.

mayor of Noto – CORRADO BONFANTI

Noto therefore rediscovers its origins, among artifacts and objects dating back to dozens of excavation campaigns carried out between Monte Finocchitto and the Necropolis of Castelluccio, with the epigraph of the Gymnasium recovered in Noto Antica and the remains of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore of ancient Eloro , the Greek colony on the sea. It is a journey through the origins of Noto, enriched by computer reconstructions and, at the moment, also by a crater on loan from the Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum of Syracuse.

“You have done a wonderful job within this huge container, thanks also to the synergy of the various bodies involved. We have to share spaces, to share our artistic and archaeological heritage which often ends up in hidden warehouses that are difficult to visit”.

Superintendent of Syracuse – SALVATORE MARTINEZ

Before cutting the ribbon and the first visit to the rooms, Mayor Bonfanti introduced the director of the Museum, the Netino archaeologist Paolo Marini, Egyptologist, curator and coordinator of the traveling exhibitions of the Egyptian Museum of Turin with whom a collaboration will soon start, thanking another Netina archaeologist, Laura Falesi, curator of the museum’s layout, finally reopened after 35 years of inactivity.

“A dutiful thought – concluded the mayor Bonfanti – must then be addressed to Gioacchino Santocono Russo, an archeology scholar and creator of the first Civic Archaeological Museum of Noto inaugurated in 1965.
By Paolo Orsi, Luigi Bernabò Brea and Giuseppe Voza, we will never finish to be grateful for having given us back our roots”.