Via Crociferi

Via Crociferi is the most complete piece of eighteenth-century street in Catania: about two hundred metres of it, straight, gently climbing, with four churches and a monastery wall along its length and an arch spanning it near the bottom. It was laid out after the earthquake as a processional route, and it still reads like one.

For a photographer the value is the emptiness. The street is closed to through traffic, there are no shops, and outside service times it is almost always quiet — which in a city as loud as Catania is worth a great deal. Set someone in the middle of the paving and the receding façades do the composition.

The lava setts are dark and eat light, so exposures here are not what the bright façades suggest; the contrast between black ground and pale stone is the picture, not a problem to fix. The street runs roughly north to south between tall buildings and is shaded for most of the day, with a short window of direct sun around the middle of the day.

The arch at the lower end, joining the Badia di Sant'Agata to the buildings opposite, is the strongest single frame — stand under it and shoot up the street.