Via Santa Filomena, renamed the Catania food district, is renewed with a new furnishing and urban redevelopment intervention thanks to the will and work of a group of restaurateurs, shopkeepers and owners of accommodation facilities, who have decided to join together to transform this space into a place that can be enjoyed by citizens and tourists. Santa Filomena District is born, not only the pulsating and dynamic heart of the city, a lively area of accommodation, catering and commercial businesses but also a socio-urban experiment where community volunteering is transformed into a productive laboratory of ideas, interventions, actions and events. With “Let’s light up the street”, the Via Santa Filomena committee inaugurated the switching on of two new lights, a lighting system and a video surveillance system for the safety of citizens. The vice mayor of Catania, Paolo La Greca, was also present at the initiative.
From an abandoned and unsafe area, Via Santa Filomena has now been transformed into a 180-metre pedestrian area with a green soul, thanks also to the forthcoming installation of new planters and plants capable of absorbing pollution and refreshing the surrounding space . Santa Filomena District, in addition to being the epicenter of the gastronomic, hospitality and commercial activities of the Etna capital, is also a container for urban cultural promotion with the aim of organizing a series of events: from the presentation of books, to art and photographic exhibitions and design to food and wine tastings and cultural meetings. Committed to the promotion of concepts such as individual and collective responsibility, the entrepreneurs and residents of Via Santa Filomena have been promoters of the valorisation of the common space which, in recent years, has radically changed the face of this street, implementing a series of initiatives such as maintenance, safety, the transformation of the street into a pedestrian area, carried out through a self-financing system.
