Beyond the surface chapel

The Chapel is designed not only as a place of contemplation, but as a path of spiritual growth that comes from contemplation. Its structure, divided on two levels, is thought as a succession of tactile and visual sensations that bring the user to experience it, through the skin and the eyes. The entrance, open to nature, is subtracted from it and becomes its border and at the same time mirror, as it represents the archetype of the cave, the first man refuge, from which to observe the surrounding nature. Unlike it, made of rough black rock, the golden core pushes the visitor not to stay too long, but to rise towards the upper floor light filtered by small openings scattered on the golden wall of the stairs. Arriving on the upper floor, the building changes its language and opens itself to the nature and history of the Santo Alberto Fort, through a large glazed area. From here, we proceed through two corridors that punctuate the path by means of gashes. These ones frame on one side the remains of the Roman village, on the other the quarries. The two passages are reunited in a reflective space devoted to rest that opens up to full height towards the sea, like the lens of a camera. Once the reflective journey is over, the golden core is descended again, but this time the visitor discovers a new space that has not been revealed before. An ancestral space marked only by the glare of light on the bare black rock coming from the slits of the ceiling. Here the visitor, immersed in the contemplation of himself, is surrounded by a bundle of lights. It is here that he discovers the true meaning of contemplation by experiencing nature under new eyes and new guise.