ARCHES OF THE MARINA

Positioned beyond the Walls of Charles V near the Port of Catania and for a portion inside the Villa Pacini, in popular jargon, the Arches of the Marina (in Sicilian “Acchi da Marina”) indicate the Catania-Syracuse railway viaduct, built to cope with the growing commercial network linked to the processing of sulfur and minerals, developed in Eastern Sicily in the second half of the 1800s.

The Petit engineer who followed the work on behalf of the Vittorio Emanuele company went back to the colors of the city: gray (predominant) and white, in fact, built the 56 arches alternating volcanic rock (dark) with limestone (light).

Until the 1930s most of the arches were immersed in the waters of the port which were then buried during the extension works, so much so that today the Arches of the Marina rest on the ground. In the 1960s the main structure was enlarged to create a second railway axis and in those years the Navy Arches became a refuge for the homeless, so much so that the dialectal expression “stari sutta l’acca ra Marina” indicates precisely one situation of economic and social hardship.