Only 1500 inhabitants in a town whose fame has reached America. A hidden village that finds its best expression in the mountains of Sicily.
There is a Sicilian village that brings all its visitors to the States, those of graffiti, those of street artists who leave their signatures all over the city with their spray cans. To think that a place of this kind is in Italy seems strange. Italy is a country where graffiti is condemned, even if it is an expression of pure and true art.
In this village, street art has been used to enhance a village of around 1500 souls which has found its nature, its best aspect. She owes everything to an American artist who decided that Sicily would be her home and that he loved it so much that he made an open-air painting of it.
Graniti, in the province of Messina, is the diamond you don’t expect, in the middle of the province of Messina, one of the best-known cities in the whole of Sicily. A village that rises in the middle of the mountains and whose highest point is 1000 meters high.
A truly unmissable beauty, if you treat yourself to a trip to Sicily, you certainly cannot return home without seeing it.
A stone’s throw from Taormina, the kingdom of Sicilian street art
So isn’t Sicily just the region of ancient history that permeates every city and every single village of this triangle of land? Well no. Sicily is also a part of modern history, of contemporary art, of the style of painting that is perhaps currently the most appreciated. If Naples is tinged with the faces of Maradona and San Gennaro, in Sicily the murals give new lustre to a village that has perhaps not been renovated for too long.
It was the year 1000 when Graniti was built, with the Alcantara River making its way through the mountains and the lava flows of Etna designing the streets. Surrounded by many places of interest including Aci Trezza, Ace Castello and Castiglione di Sicilia, there are only 15 km that divide it from the sea. The Pine Forest is its flagship and the spectacle for the celebrations of the patron saint is very suggestive.
Granite murals
Graniti Murales is a real open-air museum. Its creation began in 2017 and 37 murals have been created bearing the signatures of numerous artists from all over the world. The initiative took place thanks to Salvatore Romano and his wife Karin Maier who decided to give a new face to the city, founding Art Project Graniti, a non-profit cultural association.
The association has the task of promoting the town thanks to masonry art. The direction of this undertaking was entrusted to Richard Ralya, a Hawaiian artist who found his second best precisely in Sicily and in Graniti. But Graniti’s work is not yet finished and he resumed with new inaugurations last July.
