Who Will Save These Dying Italian Towns?
- 7 years ago
Who Will Save These Dying Italian Towns?
‘‘We can’t compete with China in mass production, and we can’t compete in technology,’’ Kihlgren says, ‘‘but we have what no one else in the world has,’’ which is the beauty of these villages
and the cultural history of its people, the stuff he calls Italy’s minor patrimony.
Unlike the others, however, Civita was saved by having been ‘‘discovered’’ by fashionable Romans (including Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele)
and expats over the last 20 or so years, who have made summer houses or weekend places of its exceptionally fine, deserted buildings, drawn by the romance of Civita’s remarkable situation — and its proximity to Rome.
One of the first towns to invite migrants into its walls was Riace, in Calabria, whose mayor,
Domenico Lucano, was named one of Fortune’s ‘‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’’ last year.
According to a 2016 Italian environmental association report, there are nearly 2,500 rural Italian villages
that are perilously depopulated, some semi-abandoned and others virtual ghost towns.
THE FIRST THING that must be said about the ancient town of Civita di Bagnoregio, just two hours away from Rome and Florence, is that it is beautiful.
Past the backless facade of a Renaissance house, with several of its windows open to the sky like a stage set, lies
a small, dusty piazza with a church, a fine seventh-century medieval tower, a small bar and not much else.
FOR ALL THE ANCIENT Italian hill towns and villages
that delight the traveler — the San Gimignanos, Montepulcianos and Fiesoles — there are scores of others (many equally or more beautiful) where few venture and in which very few reside today.
‘‘We can’t compete with China in mass production, and we can’t compete in technology,’’ Kihlgren says, ‘‘but we have what no one else in the world has,’’ which is the beauty of these villages
and the cultural history of its people, the stuff he calls Italy’s minor patrimony.
Unlike the others, however, Civita was saved by having been ‘‘discovered’’ by fashionable Romans (including Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele)
and expats over the last 20 or so years, who have made summer houses or weekend places of its exceptionally fine, deserted buildings, drawn by the romance of Civita’s remarkable situation — and its proximity to Rome.
One of the first towns to invite migrants into its walls was Riace, in Calabria, whose mayor,
Domenico Lucano, was named one of Fortune’s ‘‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’’ last year.
According to a 2016 Italian environmental association report, there are nearly 2,500 rural Italian villages
that are perilously depopulated, some semi-abandoned and others virtual ghost towns.
THE FIRST THING that must be said about the ancient town of Civita di Bagnoregio, just two hours away from Rome and Florence, is that it is beautiful.
Past the backless facade of a Renaissance house, with several of its windows open to the sky like a stage set, lies
a small, dusty piazza with a church, a fine seventh-century medieval tower, a small bar and not much else.
FOR ALL THE ANCIENT Italian hill towns and villages
that delight the traveler — the San Gimignanos, Montepulcianos and Fiesoles — there are scores of others (many equally or more beautiful) where few venture and in which very few reside today.