Chairs and benches that tell the story of Asinara. Instruments of four generations of students, children of penitentiary police officers and civilian staff, in the years in which the prison community had already taken root on the island. The old school founded in the early twentieth century has found space inside the Observatory of Prison Memory in the former central branch of Cala d'Oliva , the museum which is part of the network of structures recovered and managed by the Park Authority for institutional services and the enrichment of visits.

Old desks with fixed backs, geographical maps, blackboards and chairs, traces of a returning past. «They are reminiscent of the school system characterized until the Seventies by two elementary schools, Cala Reale and Cala d'Oliva, obviously multi-class, each entrusted to a single teacher», explain the commissioner and director of the park, Giovanni Cubeddu and Vittorio Gazale. Students from neighboring towns were enrolled in the Cala Reale school and reached the classroom on foot or on makeshift vehicles.

"Generally at the end of the fifth year one had to leave the island to continue their studies - they add - only later were middle school courses introduced and nursery school sections opened". Every piece of history was dusted off by Gionamaria Deriu, former penitentiary police inspector on the island, now a volunteer assistant who carefully worked on setting up a space, rediscovering old memories.

«Emotions that are awakened because every time I go back to the past which was sometimes painful», says Deriu «but in any case everything has remained inside me like a rich treasure that I would like to show to others. This island shaped me and I would like this work to be important for the new generations. Today these tools that exude history have given way to computers and the electronic blackboard, but they remember important moments experienced at Asinara."

Behind those desks there were also well-known figures, such as the former prison director Franco Massidda, head of the penal colony from 1980 to 1986, the mayor of Stintino, Rita Vallebella and, again, the teachers Franca Silvetti and Simonetta Giordo. Many testimonies were collected by Franca Fadda, wife of the prison doctor, who worked as a teacher on the island for many years.

The Observatory of Memory is also the story of the work carried out by a handful of inmates who are studying the old prison archives. Documents freed from oblivion that allow many moments of daily life to be relived. An exciting journey, a journey back in memory, a discovery of particular moments that have left indelible marks on the life of the island. The setup was possible thanks to a European Por Fesr project, financed by the Sardinia Region, which allowed the recovery and subsequent exhibition of the recovered materials. It is a journey that spans a long period of time, from 1885 to 1998, where the prison staff and the inmate are always at the center of the narrative.

Inside, through various installations created with recovered and donated material, the organization of the prison island system is told, the complexity of the detention structure through the branches, the relationship with the environment, the ramifications on the territory, the bitter everyday life experienced by men of punishment. Different environments are described, from the management, to the barbershop, to the police barracks, with exciting stories, testimonies, letters and thoughts of inmates from all over Italy. An extraordinary set of curious anecdotes and memories of prison life.

© Riproduzione riservata