PROGETTO "ELA ELA MU KONDA !  COME VISIT US !VIENI A TROVARCI !"

Ela ela mu kondà - Come and visit us! - Cultural workshops at the G. Rohlfs Museum in Bova/ Cultural workshops at the G. Rohlfs Museum in Bova Activity financed to the Municipality of Bova by the Regione Calabria Department of Economic Development and Cultural Attractions - "Support for activities of animation in the cultural heritage" Annuality 2020. CAP funds 2007/2013 - Scheda di int. n. 7 Pilastro III Nuove operazioni - "Interventi per la promozione e la produzione culturale".

The project, under the curatorship of Prof. Pasquale Faenza and the integrated communication campaign of the photographer Stefano Mileto, has made it possible to create a cultural retrospective aimed at suggesting, through the literature of the great travellers of the Grand Tour in Greek Calabria, key figures who travelled through southern Aspromonte from the end of the seventeenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. The programme has been designed for both an international adult audience and a young audience, in keeping with the educational vocation of the Gerhard Rohlfs Museum of the Greek-Calabrian Language and the project itself.

Four recitation workshops were held in the rooms of the Museum, the Franco Mosino Library, and in the squares and belvederes of the village, proposing verses from The Odyssey that inspired the late Professor Franco Mosino (to whom the Rohlfs Museum Library is dedicated) to hypothesise a Magna-Greek origin of the world's most famous travel poem. Six urban and naturalistic walks in English and Italian, based on travel literature, allowed a deeper understanding of the village of Bova, its territory and foreign characters of the Grand Tour such as Henry Swimburne, Edward Lear, Norman Douglas, Jules Destrée and Gerard Rohlfs. Workshops on tasting local wines and cheeses, archaeology workshops for children, limerick readings in the original language by the famous English traveller Edward Lear, the revival of the exhibition New Looks for Old Paths (12 didactic metal panels on E. Lear's journey through the Grecanica area, with captions and illustrated figures in Braille), theatre shows telling the story of the journey and the history of the area. Theatrical performances based on passages from the diaries of famous Grand Tourists who stayed in Bova in 1848 and 1915, numerous book presentations and concerts of Hebrew and Baroque music make the museum and its sections a unique cultural attraction.