Good news for the protection of the city’s cultural heritage, and in particular that linked to a great figure of our literary and anthropological world, the poet Maria Costa, the “voice of the Strait” who passed away in 2016, who due to her high value was included in the Register of Intangible Heritage of the Sicilian Region as a “Living Human Treasure” in 2006. The municipal council, on the proposal of the Councilor for Culture Enzo Caruso, approved the resolution establishing the acquisition of Maria Costa’s fund, donated by her nephew and heir Maurizio Costa, with the collaboration of the Study Center named after the poet.
The objective – notes Caruso – is above all to safeguard Maria Costa’s many manuscripts from possible deterioration due to unsuitable conservation and at the same time to start a digitization project to make them accessible to scholars in an agile and direct way. The collection, made up of various texts, documents, books, precious recordings and discs, manuscripts, many of which are still unpublished, and notebooks where the poetess of Case Basse wrote down her verses and thoughts on a daily basis. The collection will be stored on a special shelf in the Municipal Archives, in the “Giovanni Molonia” room of the “Antonello” Palace of Culture.