Ragusa Ibla once again hosted the Baroque & Neo-Baroque Festival, curated by architect and university lecturer Roberto Semprini and produced by entrepreneur Gianni Leggio
by Carlo Cattaneo
The event has converted some of the city’s most historic buildings into spaces for site-specific installations and venues for conferences, performances, and workshops.
It is a prominent cultural festival focused on reinterpreting the Baroque heritage of Val di Noto. Each year, the festival tackles this theme through a subtitle that fosters dialogue between the modern world and the reconstruction efforts following the 1693 earthquake, which transformed the area’s urban and architectural fabric.
The 2026 theme was Rebirth: the role of materials in the architecture of historic centres, emphasising local materials such as pitch stone, lava stone, marble, and granite as essential elements that connect traditional building practices with contemporary architecture and design.
The installations offered a comparison between local resources and the experiments conducted by companies operating in the new materials sector.
The festival offered a chance to consider the design of public spaces through temporary installations focused on urban regeneration in the historic centre. These exhibitions and displays were located in historic buildings and open city spaces, featuring impressive presentations by designers, artists, and photographers. To emphasize the event’s function as a cultural hub, a dedicated training area was also set up, involving students from the Design Course at Brera Academy of Fine Arts and the Project Communication Course at IULM.
(Art view – Barocco & Neobarocco – Barchemagazine.com – Excerpted from Barche, August 2026)
