The Temples Kept Secret for Fourteen Years

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Starting in 1978, Airaudi directed community members in excavating a network of chambers beneath the Damanhur settlement by hand, without machinery and without informing the surrounding towns or Italian authorities of what was underway. The result, later named the Temples of Humankind, is an extensive complex of halls decorated with mosaics, stained glass and sculpture, built entirely underground and entirely without permits. Damanhur kept the temples secret for fourteen years, until a lawsuit filed by a former member in 1992 forced their existence into public and legal view for the first time. Italian officials, confronted with a finished monumental structure rather than a proposal, ultimately allowed the temples to stand rather than order their destruction, and they have since become Damanhur's best known feature, drawing visitors who come specifically to see them. The episode captures something particular about Airaudi's leadership: he was willing to commit years of communal labor to a project the outside world was never meant to discover, and the project survived exposure well enough to become the community's public identity. Airaudi died on 24 June 2013 at sixty three, at the Damanhur community of Aval in Cuceglio, of colon cancer that had spread to his liver, so the temples he spent fourteen years keeping secret outlived their builder by well over a decade as the community's defining public monument.