ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MORE LIVES
Workshop on sustainability in collaboration with Piacere Modena. Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 October at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Modena World Heritage in celebration is an event for all and sundry. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine more lives is an experience for children on the topic of sustainability: from the medieval phenomenon of reuse to the creative reuse of objects and food in the circular economy.
Participation is free of charge upon reservation on visitmodena.it
The brick structures of the Cathedral and the Torre Ghirlandina are clad with a great variety of multi-coloured stones, as many as 23 in all. This is explained by the phenomenon of re-use, the recovery of material from Roman times to build Romanesque monuments and ennoble the city's most important buildings.
In the Modenese case we see different forms of reuse: the visible reuse of elements that are given a new function (e.g. the lions of the prothyrum on the façade), the recovery of simple building material (look at how many stones of different colours there are, all coming from Mutina and Roman quarries, even an example of the element of a monument with a cylindrical body in the apse), the reuse of stones to be reworked to make new sculptural decorations (e.g. Wiligelmo's slabs).
The remains of Mutina lay underground, on the edge of the medieval city centre, and were a valuable find, as evidenced by the Relatio, chronicling the construction of the cathedral, making it possible to find material otherwise not found in the area and avoiding costly transport costs. The workers marked the recovered stones with capital letters that facilitated the assembly of the architectural cladding. In some ashlars, these marks of the stone masons are still visible.
Today We are in the business of protecting ancient monuments and could never excavate, find finds and break them down to reuse the material at our leisure. At the same time, however, this practice still teaches us something in the present and reminds us of one of the principles of the circular economy. This model of production and consumption, which has been gaining ground in recent years as a response to environmental emergencies, aims to extend the life cycle of products and minimise the production of waste, in order to manage all resources in a more responsible and conscious, hence sustainable, way.
This experience will make children travel through our history to return to the present and imagine a future, trying to understand how to live more sustainably, taking inspiration from those who built the cathedral and the Ghirlandina tower.
After a visit to the World Heritage Site, in the workshop we will give new life to everyday objects and with the experts from Piacere Modena we will put into practice the saying 'in the kitchen you don't throw anything away', against food waste.
