Here was a crumbling rural house that the local government decided to purchase to make a little square conceived as an open courtyard: the structure, opened to the public on 24 June, 1994, may be defined as a two-floor loggia, communicating with nature and with the place’s identity.
In the centre of the porch in fact there is a fountain in Simona stone, a simple wash-tub, one of those places for work and social relations belonging to the farming reality linked to female work. The works by the woman sculptor from Brescia, Franca Ghitti (1932-2012) complete the structure, evoking
collective memories. On the flooring stand out the signs of the children’s games. The fence on the side, “Witnesses of Gianico”, is formed by old train sleepers, where iron plates report in dialect the nickname of every family of Gianico. But the most representative work is “La vicinia”, made by a series
of totem sculptures representing the organization of the heads of the family, the work in the fields and collective life.
The first niche on the left shelters “The table of offerings”: a work on the subject of farming life, which recalls the rite of the earth and work ruled by the head of the family. The “great faggot” of wood collected in a circle of barrel iron speaks of the long life of the woodcutter, but also of the long winter evenings. “The sculpture of time” is a work with seven iron daggers carved in gradually reduced sizes: it is the subjective perception of the running of time in the course of human life. Thus from the works the memory of a whole town emerges, preserved in the public space.
WHAT TO SEE
The works by Franca Ghitti.
IN THE SURROUNDINGS
The historical centre, with the Massari home, the ex Fiorini home, the Viola home, the Mondinini home, the Pedretti home, the Fiorini-Marchetti home, the Town Hall, the Press fountain and the War Memorial; the Parish church; the church of St. Maria al Monte (on the hill); the church of St. Rocco (on the valley bottom, at the head of town).