LaFenice

LaFenice (The Phoenix) is a public sculpture by the Architecture and Vision design team, Arturo Vittori and Andreas Vogler, sited in the Piazza della Memoria of the waterfront in Messina, Sicily in Italy.

The sculpture for this memorial square was selected in a city-sponsored competition as part of a larger urban renewal project started in 2003 to revitalize the public spaces between buildings built in the 1930s along the quay.

[1] The sculpture is situated at the intersection of several important axises, connecting the busy port to the city, tracing the boulevard flanking the waterfront, and ultimately, between the Earth and sky.

The sculpture also takes inspiration from the geometric patterns in the multi-colored stonework in the Norman-Arab-Byzantine architecture of the nearby Church of the Annunciation of the Catalans (Annunziata dei Catalani), built during the 12th Century on the site of a pagan temple to Neptune.

The sculpture's upward thrust commemorates the collective memory of the citizens that have tenaciously rebuilt their city each time it has been devastated by war or natural disaster, most famously, the December 1908 earthquake.