MOAI

HISTORICAL NOTES AND DESCRIPTION

From Vitorchiano, after crossing the Ponte Nuovo and walking along Via Teverina for a short distance, you reach the Moai. It is a giant statue, six meters high, in peperino stone, which reproduces the anthropomorphic monoliths of Easter Island “I Moai”. The term “moai” indicated the white race caste that inhabited Easter Island that created all the Moai present on the island, and it is said that this race held the secret of the stone to make them. The work was created in Vitorchiano in 1990 by eleven Maori of the Atan family, originally from Rapa Nui, who came to Italy to promote the restoration of their statues. Given the characteristics of the local stone “il peperino” corresponding to the volcanic stone with which the original moai are made, the Chilean team found it easy and direct to reproduce the monument using the same construction techniques with axes and stones. This statue represents the only Moai sculpture in the world present outside Easter Island. A peculiarity is that the statue was created on the occasion of the television program “In search of the ark”. The original location of the statue was in the center of Piazzale Umberto I, but in 2007 it was moved temporarily to be exhibited for nine months in Villanovaforru, Sardinia, on the occasion of the pre-Columbian art exhibition in the “Sa Corona Arrubia” Territory Museum. An exhibition that reconstructed paths and testimonies on the uses and customs of the people who once inhabited the Andean areas of Chile, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Easter Island. In 2008, when she returned to Vitorchiano, she was given the new destination which coincides with the current location on Via Teverina. From a stylistic point of view, the moai is in effect a faithful reproduction of the originals on Easter Island. Through deep furrows, the Atan have created a monument with hard, simple and linear features, while the bust of the monolith is barely sculpted. On the head the moai wears the Pukapo, a sculpted headdress, made up of two blocks of peperino. The large elongated face of the statue is enriched in detail by the well-defined ‘Long Ears’. The navel, markedly underlined, indicates a symbolic ‘center’ in being; the hands with very long and tapered fingers, are compostly adherent to the belly, rather prominent. The thumbs, also long and tapered, are slightly turned upwards.

Vitorchiano Camper Stop

The same square that houses the Moai in Via della Teverina, in the direction of Grotte Santo Stefano just 450 meters from the village of Vitorchiano, houses the municipal parking area for campers. The services available are: Drinking water fountain, camper service in the cockpit and toilet cassette unloading. Open all year round, no limits of stay are indicated.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vitorchiano, il passato presente, edition edited by Fiorenzo Mascagna, historical research by Elide Vagnozzi, Stampa Arti Grafiche Artigiane 2005, p. 72-74.

Pietroni E., scheda OA in Varie Vitorchiano, 1995.

http://www.patrimoniosos.it/rsol.php?op=getintervento&id=373

http://www.meteomoai.eu/storia/moai.htm

http://www.patrimoniosos.it/rsol.php?op=getarticle&id=27766

http://www.duepassinelmistero.com/MoaiVitorchiano.htm

http://www.fotovideolab.it/vitorchiano/IL_MOAI.htm

Special thanks to Dr. Andrea Presutti for scientific advice and archival photographic material provided on Vitorchiano.