The Amenano Fountain
is situated in
Piazza Duomo, beyond the Palazzo Dei Chierici, behind which
sprawls Catania’s loud and colourful fish market, the ‘Pescheria’.
It was built to adorn the entrance of the old fish market and it
marks the location of the Amenano, a powerful river. It once ran
overground and it was on its banks that the Greeks founded the
city of Katàne. The eruption of Mount Etna in 1669 buried many
things and the river Amenano too.
The river
continued running in Catania, but not on the ground rather
underground. The Amenano appears on the surface in an angle of
Piazza Duomo, just shortly before it flows into the sea.
In the fountain
the river is represented by a young boy between two tritons
bearing a cornucopia which pours water into the fountain’s
basin.
The fountain was
begun in 1864 and was finished in 1867, and is the work of
Neapolitan sculptor Tito Angelini. It is better known to the
people of Catania as “l’acqua o’ linzolu”, because of the
“sheets” of water which flow down into the basin.
