“The idea of a Resurrection of some columns of the temple G He leaves me very perplexed: I’m afraid that, as happened with the Temple disappears, attracting attention to a single point, the perception of monumentality of the great ruin: what we have there is the largest Greek ruin existing in the world “.
On the day when the new excavations in Selinunte confirm his intuition on the location of the north door of the ancient colony of Megara Iblea and on the conformation of the city, Dieter Mertens invites you to keep Selinunte As it is today and as has appeared for centuries to visitors from all over the world: what the writer Vincenzo Consolo called in the novel Retablo “Ruine of a city and a story. Rugine of history”.
“There is not – explains Mertens to AGI – a monument throughout the Greek world that expresses this impressive destruction, this extraordinary monumentality: when we raise three columns there, yes It will reduce the whole impression we have of great ruin. The perception of this ruin is part of our cultural heritage “.
The great German archaeologist, director for years of the Germanic Archaeological Institute of Rome, began to dig in Sicily in 1971. Today he has 85 yearsand lives the discovery of the door to the north with satisfaction mixed with pride for having already guessed in the nineties that in the Galera Bagliazzo area, where there is a necropolis, there was something to investigate.
“I have always worked – he says – in tune with regional institutions and superintendencies, and with Vincenzo Tusa I had the specific task of studying the walls, or the spatial definition of the entire city. It was also the year of start of the international study of Tusa from which the archaeological park was born”. Fifty years of excavation. Selinunte “was a pin from my life in every respect: archaeological, scientific, historical and even human: the people I met, life in Sicily collaborating with everyone, from the superintendents to the last worker”.
Dieter Mertens discovered two doors on the eastern walls. “Then – he says to AGI – we stopped: the work was still to be done too great. The entire extension was investigated today with geomagnetic methods that allowed us to make us a picture of the entire urban planning of the city. We managed to identify some points, very few, on which to concentrate our attention. From this I am very clearly the presence of a very strong ‘anomalià on the north tip, in the area of Galera Bagliazzo: True north door of the city.
During 2025, he adds Mertens, two great volumes will come out with the results of these excavations in the Agora. “I am very, very happy – he underlines, returning to today’s discovery – that what we had glimpsed then we had: a very important work, from which the quality of the masonry is also found. This door is located at the point of which the city is seen at 360 degrees, with a unique overview both towards the sea and towards the hinterland”.
Over the years Mertens seems to have made an idea of the character of the ancient Selinuntini. The city stands “on a fertile and easily defensible plateau, with two natural landings: an ideal place for a city destined to become rich, also strong of a proximity to the Punics that have not always been enemies. The megaresi who founded Selinunte had a great ability to predict and seize the opportunities of this extraordinary site. And for me that I studied the Greek temples, Selinunte represented the city model to be studiedto understand the background on which these masterpieces arise: one archaic, powerful city, Equipped with a regularity of the urban plant, an agora and the measures that has few comparisons in the Greek world “.
What should be deepened, again?
“We know little – the archaeologist replies – the housing classes, life in the city inside the walls and also the chora, the territory, the very vast campaign that Selinunte supported. This is one of the great themes to be explored: the daily life of the lives of the inhabitants must be investigated through their history. And also the transformation determined by the Punic culture, which took the site, and the morality between the cultures: these are the current themes of the new investigations. The whole city, without ever privileging one part “.