‘Desiderio, King of the Lombards and Gravisca’ is an urban art intervention curated by Street Levels Gallery, as part of Garibaldi Street Fest, in collaboration with Urban Vision Festival and the Municipality of Montalto di Castro.

The work, created by artist Mehstre, evokes the historical doubt about the birth of the town: various legends speculate its origins but none of them find documentation. Could a group of refugees fleeing the coastal town of Gravisca in the 5th century have laid the foundation for the first settlement? Or perhaps Desiderio, King of the Lombards, could have founded the historic castle a few centuries later? The voices of the inhabitants reveal other fictional hypotheses and some historically reported versions.

However, the uncertainty that surrounds and haunts Montalto di Castro has shrouded the small village in an ancient and fascinating mystery.

Mehstre, with his oneiric imagery and details stolen from the Medieval era, has proposed his own reading that revives the past while maintaining a strong reference to the present. Magical and occult, intimate and metaphysical, fantastic and enigmatic. The work of the Florentine artist for the municipality of Montalto di Castro has a strong site-specific character and is the result of a sincere affinity between the aesthetics of the artist and the place for which the work is intended.

ALTRO