From 07 August 2024 to 30 September 2024
Taormina | Messina
Location: Palazzo Ciampoli
Address: Salita Ciampoli
Hours: Visits every day from 10am to 7pm
The large archaeological and multimedia exhibition entitled “From Tauromenion to Tauromenium is open to the public. The invisible city between history and archaeology”, scheduled at Palazzo Ciampoli from 7 August to 30 November 2024.
“With this exhibition – explained director Tigano – we enter into the DNA of the ancient city, that Tauromenion of the Greeks which became Tauromenium with the Romans. We talk about the houses of men, the public buildings such as the agora, the baths and the naumachies, the houses of the gods with temples and sanctuaries which later became Christian churches. And the ancient burial ways with the chamber tombs still existing. Although its monumentality is mainly linked to the ancient theatre, Taormina has revealed numerous and important archaeological finds for three centuries which tell us a lot about the history of the city and its people. A mosaic of information, recomposed with the necessary scientific rigor and with a multidisciplinary approach, crossing documentary sources, movable finds and ancient structures. While with the support of modern digital technologies, we have created a series of 3D animations to give visitors the wonder of a city where the wonderful landscape dialogues with the urban spaces intended for the community which, from the theater onwards, were conceived with a strong impact scenographic." During the presentation, the director wanted to remember the two figures who, five years ago after she took office at the helm of the Park, inspired her with the idea of the exhibition on Tauromenion: the archaeologist Cettina Rizzo and the professor Francesca Gullotta , who passed away prematurely, to whose memory he wanted to dedicate the project.
At Palazzo Ciampoli there are finds that have so far been kept in the Park's warehouses (capitals, epigraphs, statues) and others that are the result of more recent discoveries, known to scholars but never exhibited (such as some tanagrinas found in the cistern of the Timeo hotel and finds from excavations at Villa San Pancrazio, the former San Domenico Convent and other private properties). And also heads, bas-reliefs and inscriptions, finds already known and normally exhibited in the Antiquarium of the Theater here framed in the thematic and historical context.
For the occasion, eagerly awaited by the local community, the famous "Priestess of Isis" returned to Taormina, a marble statue discovered in 1867 near the church of San Pancrazio - formerly a place of worship of Isis and Serapis - and since 1868 transferred to Salinas Museum in Palermo, the first archaeological museum in Sicily.
There are six thematic sections of the exhibition itinerary, which unfolds over the two floors of Palazzo Ciampoli. We start from the traces of the Sicilian populations documented by the Cocolonazzo necropolis: the origins, living and living in Tauromenion/ium: the houses of men; public buildings, sacred places, necropolises, from the theater to the amphitheatre, collecting. While an archaeological map, 3D reconstructions and a multimedia and immersive apparatus (video and video mapping) will make visitors relive the experience of wandering through current alleys and inside the ancient city
