Forte Castellaccio is preparing to return as a protagonist in the cultural and social life of Messina. The State Property Agency granted the monumental complex to the Metropolitan City of Messina free of charge for fifteen years, as part of the City Plan for public buildings, officially launching the urban regeneration project financed with over 55 million euros through the Integrated Urban Plans of the PNRR.
The project involves the restoration and redevelopment of the ancient fortification, with interventions aimed at the recovery of the historical-architectural elements and the demolition of the additions built over time. The complex will become “The City of Boys”, a new identity space dedicated to culture, youth training, creativity and sociality, with museums, temporary exhibitions, cultural events and educational activities. An intervention that will restore authenticity to the site and offer the community a new place of inclusion and social development.
“The return of Forte Castellaccio to the city and its community represents a historic step in the urban regeneration path that we are carrying out – declares the metropolitan Mayor, Federico Basile -. This symbolic place, now recovered thanks to the PNRR and the collaboration with the State Property Agency, will become a cultural reference point for the new generations and a space in which to enhance the memory, identity and future of the metropolitan city”.
Present today in Palermo for the formalization of the concession, the General Director of the Metropolitan City, Giuseppe Campagna, underlined: “The Forte Castellaccio project is one of the most significant interventions of our program for the valorisation of public heritage. Returning assets of this value to the city and transforming them into places of aggregation, culture and social innovation means concretely investing in the future of Messina and its young people”.
The transformation of Forte Castellaccio is in fact part of a broader strategy of urban regeneration which aims to recover and enhance historical, architectural and landscape assets, making them engines of cultural growth, social inclusion and sustainable development.