The first archaeological map of Centuripe
Jean Pierre Laurent Hoüel, French painter, architect, engraver and traveler of the 18th century is the author of the first archaeological map of Centuripe.
Jean Pierre arrived in Centuripe in 1778 and the complex morphology of the place, which presented itself in front of him, was immediately defined as "bizarre" and intrigued him so much that it forced him to draw up a map of the city.
The map is made with black ink , brown watercolor brush on a black pencil trace. The map will be translated, a few years later, into an engraving and published in the third volume of Voyage pittoresque.
The map has some peculiarities which, both in the 1778 drawing and in the subsequently published engraving, are not easy to grasp with the naked eye: the French artist, in fact, noted on it with letters, the sites of the monuments and ruins that he considered of greatest interest. The succession of letters suggests a more rational path than the one that unfolds in the text of the Voyage: as if the letters had been assigned by a preliminary survey, conducted by Houel certainly together with some Augustinian friar, with whom he was a guest, who knew good places.
