BussanaEN

Like the Arabian Phoenix, symbol of immortality, resurrection and life after the death, the small village of Old Bussana is risen again after a terrible earthquake had destroyed it in 1887. And like the mythical bird that always rises from own ashes, it has wrapped itself in a cloak of fascination, poetry and… Art.

Arabian Phoenix from a medieval book

This medieval village ( arisen in the year 1050 ), located at 8 km to the northeast of San Remo, in Liguria, is a place out of time and out of the tourist mass routes. A hidden jewel known in all the world that loves the Art. It is a very small village that rises on a full of rocks hill, where the wind often brings the breeze and the smells of the sea making eyes at the horizon.

The remains of a primitive castle, constructed in years 1000 by the Earl Ottone of Ventimiglia, named also the “Black Earl”, dominates the valley below. The famous Italian novelist Emilio Salgari (1862-1911) draws cue from the deeds of the Black Earl in order to construct the bold adventures of its most famous book “the Black Corsair”.

Abandoned after the earthquake of 1887, the village of Old Bussana knew the loneliness of the time between dry twigs, falling houses and ruins.

Then, the brigands arrived hiding themselves between its walls and, at last, the emigrants coming from the South of Italy tried to find work in the North and a temporary shelter for their families. But soon they abandoned the village too.

Old Bussana knew an other long period of loneliness until one day landed on it some artists. From there in few years, between the green of hills and the bright colours of the flowers, the village lived again. Painters, sculptors, musicians, ceramists first, photographers, actors, directors then, are the artists whom restored, with their own hands and at their own expense, those houses of stone and mud that could be used as rooms or study - respecting the architecture and the medieval urban planning structure of the village.




The work of these artists, arrived from every part of Europe and having worked hardly against heap of ruins, the advancement of the vegetation, without light, water or gas, made to revive to new life Old Bussana...and the materials used for the reconstruction were the tiles, the stones and the bricks recovered from the ruins.

Restructured the buildings less damaged by the earthquake, this handful of men has created a “center of excellence of the art”, with small studies, artistic laboratories and galleries scattered in the alleys of the village.

Thus, in the years' 80, arisen the “International Village of the Artists”, moral board pleaded by the UNESCO, whose predominant target has been, and it is, to create a new relationship between the public and the artist in an extraordinarily environment out of the ordinary, different and far away from the “civilization”. Hollander, Italian, Americans, Canadians, Austrians, Germans, Swedish, French, English, Jugoslav, Swiss, Spanish artists… make all part of this cosmopolitan community.

Old Bussana has a fascination very particular. It seems that beyond that is looked at or it is touched, there is something that eludes the five senses : it is the spirit of the village, an incorporeal entity that speeds up and excites. To take a walk in the Old Bussana is an experience unforgettable : happening, jazz, jam sessions, theatrical and artists shows carry out from one house to another. The most disparate languages fill up the alleys unchangeable in the time. These particular inhabitants do not perceive the national barriers and the diversity of the languages do not worry them. They have a life style that joins them, far from the noisy cities and the civilization of the consumptions. Old Bussana is a place where, in the hush of the luxuriant nature, the art can freely flow from the spirit to its more material realization. Old Bussana is a symbol in Europe that joins continents, races and languages from all around the world ■