A suggestive itinerary that reconstructs Homer's journey animated the summer in Tropea
Ulysses on his journey to the heart of the Mediterranean crossed the Strait of Scilla and Cariddi, passing through the Isthmus of Catanzaro until it reaches the Costa degli Dei between Tropea, Capo Vaticano and Pizzo. It is the evocative path told by Homer that famous studies have identified and geolocated precisely in the Calabrian territory. A series of reproductions of pictorial and sculptural masterpieces, vases and panels reconstruct the suggestion of an itinerary between history, myth and legend within what is the first museum in Italy entirely dedicated to the myth of Ulysses and to Homer's journey between Calabria and Sicily.
In Calabria the first museum dedicated to the Odyssey and the myth of Ulysses
The Odyssey Museum was born in Catanzaro and throughout the summer he stopped at Monumental complex of Santa Chiara a Tropea for the flagship exhibition event that enriched the candidacy of the "Pearl of the Tyrrhenian" as the Italian Capital of Culture 2022. Sergio Basile, director of the Regional Museum Network, which has given life to an original project, inspired by the studies of illustrious authors such as Wolf and Balletta, with the aim of enhancing the magical union between Homer's work and the glorious history of Magna Graecia. In a volume signed by him, he summed it up like this the influence that the myth of Ulysses continues to exert after so many centuries.
"The Odyssey, from the Greek Odysseia, after the Bible is probably the most read and translated book of all time and, together with the Iliad, the most well-known work of antiquity, narrating the adventurous pilgrimage to Ithaca of Ulysses, the ingenious architect of the famous horse that allowed the Achaeans to conquer the sacred fortress of Troy. The Iliad and the Odyssey inaugurated the era of the great epic poems, epochal watersheds that marked the decline of the oral tradition, towards a whole new way of grasping and transmitting the secrets of history.
Great Greece
Chronologically the Odyssey, following a temporal path full of revolutionary stages, inaugurates the season of Hellenic colonization of vast regions of the Mediterranean and of that land - Calabria - which would go down in history as the heart of the "Magna Graecia". Among the Greek populations most active in this colonization process it is necessary to remember the Chalcidians, the Achaeans of the Peloponnese, the Spartans, the Locrians, the Ionians and the Athenians.
In this vein, the Homeric poem is framed by many historians as a sort of great marketing campaign, probably the most impressive at the turn of the centuries that preceded and followed the universal echo of the deeds of the hero of Ithaca. Some scholars, including the German Armin Wolf, consider it a real manifesto-novel, a very effective propaganda slogan that fomented the exodus to the rich West, pushing large Achaean communities to discover new terrestrial paradises in which to sink their their roots and thrive ".
The Odyssey Museum also captured national attention thanks to a special feature by "Blue Line" aired on Rai Uno. Ambassador of the Tropea project was the master goldsmith Michele Entrusted who wanted to exhibit to the public the pieces of the collection "Paths of a precious history - theEvolution of the jewel from ancient Magna Graecia to the present day ", a story suspended between tradition and modernity that contributes to the promotion and enhancement of the territory.
The next stop at the Odyssey Museum
Gerardo Ferlaino representing the Foundation italiani.it with which the foundations of a synergistic collaboration were laid on the occasion of the next stage of the exhibition foreseen in Catanzaro between October and December 2020.
Not only that, the project aims to take an itinerant form with the programming of also stops in Europe, America and Australia. By bringing to light the authentic roots of Calabria as a crossroads of exchanges and cultures, the Odyssey Museum can represent a driving force for the growth and tourist enhancement of the territory.
For collaborations and partnership proposals it is possible to send an e-mail to [email protected]
