Balestrino: the ancient charm of a ghost village.

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT BALESTRINO!

ORIGINAL POST: BALESTRINO, IL FASCINO ANTICO DI UN BORGO FANTASMA.

Balestrino has its own particular appeal, that of a medieval village being slowly taken back by nature after being abandoned by man… 

Where today stands the imposing Del Carretto castle, in Byzantine age was probably built a fortified position, around which then rose the Burgus Plebis of Balestrino, from which the “Borgo” district, now abandoned, developed. The other districts of Bergalla, Cuneo and Poggio formed in early Middle Ages as the first real residential settlement, improving their agricultural activities and moving their olive, legume and cereal farming up on the mountainsides thanks to the use of terrace cultivation, typical of the Liguria region. In feudal times the Bava, a noble family from Piemonte, became the first lords of the Balestrino feud, and built the first castle. The feud then was passed to the Del Carretto marquises who, around mid-XVI century, built their castle on the rock overlooking the village. Between 1515 and 1559 king Pirro II issued a number of edicts that burdened families with heavy taxes and work provisions; but the village notables, used to having an almost complete freedom, didn’t accept these edicts and prepared a conspiracy…

In 1561 Pirro II was killed and his castle burned down. The feud remained in the hands of the Del Carretto, who in order to prevent more riots established a court with torture chambers. Despite this, Balestrino knew an age of great expansion, becoming a sort of economic capital for the entire valley. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s occupation, in XVIII century, however, it became the scene of dramatic events: the people defended strenuously their territory, through battles and retaliations, but with poor results and the deaths of many villagers. After becoming part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, Balestrino was annexed to Piemonte, and then, when the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860, definitively to Liguria.

The Del Carretto castle still dominates the beautiful sea-facing valley, in memory of the time when it was surrounded by a lively village with a solid mill, furnace and soap-based economy. Today Balestrino is a lifeless town, where the signs of time can be read in the cracks in the walls and in the weeds slowly eating its foundations. A time no longer told by the sundial and the church’s clock is faceless. 

The episode that forced the townspeople to abandon their homes and move to the surroundings, in what is today Balestrino’s population centre, took place in 1953, when the town had been declared impracticable: a serious geological instability posed a threat to the village and its inhabitants…

The abandoned part of Balestrino is about 1,5 hectares wide, with over 44000 square metres of recoverable structures. A good part of the buildings suffers from a solidity-compromising decay, but is today at the centre of a study and recovery project aiming at the complete reconstruction of the medieval urban space. This project could restore Balestrino to its former medieval charm, but would surely deprive it of the peculiarity that sets it apart from other ancient towns: its crumbling and mysterious condition of abandon, as if immortalized in a snapshot taken decades ago.

The various legends, mysteries and popular beliefs passed down during the centuries and told around the fireplace have always influenced the town’s story, and now duel its ghostly charm at night and echo among sinister noises and shadows…

Balestrino’s charm spread well beyond national borders, ranking among the twenty most famous and eerie ghost towns in the world. For this reason it was chosen as location for the movie “Inkheart”, a fantasy story set in the real world in which the village is brought back to live after years of abandon. In fact, it was turned into Capricorn Village and partially rebuilt through special effects letting us witness the village how it probably once was, with people walking the streets, merchants, guards, everyday life’s activities…

Walking through the narrow alleys sends shivers to the mind, which wanders back in time with imagination, trying to visualise people standing behind the black, empty windows, without finding anything but the lonely remains of that life. Balestrino is a ghost town which preserves not only the memory of its people’s presence, but also a trace of man’s passage…

Link to ORIGINAL POST.

(Translation by Marco Salvadori)

A disappearing past, a forgetting present, a fading future...

ORIGINAL POST: UN PASSATO CHE SCOMPARE, UN PRESENTE CHE DIMENTICA E UN FUTURO CHE CANCELLA

 

Let’s try to picture a house, our house. Our shelter, the place where we rest, where every day we find ourselves in. We may travel all around the world, but home is always our fixed point, our main destination. Now let’s imagine losing it, having to abandon it forever…let’s picture a village, or a city, let’s picture every single place we hang around every single day. Let’s picture a memory of our childhoods. And now, let’s picture a cemetery of houses, of broken memories and ruins of interrupted lives…this was the sad destiny of many towns, and will be the inescapable destiny of many others. 

Large is the number of ghost towns in Italy and the world, larger than what one would imagine. Some to resist time and destruction for now, others are gone forever, erased from memory and maps alike. Many can be the causes for this most times traumatic and painful abandon. Earthquakes, floods, fires, landslides, natural phenomena in front of which we remain defenceless. Many towns were forgotten and left alone even before dying. Maybe after being exploited for as long as they could produce wealth. And then they empty slowly, and slowly they become skeletons of the past. Because man needs a home to feel safe, but the home too needs man to keep standing… The present of many houses, today, is this… 

 

Romagnano Al Monte, abandoned after the Irpinia Earthquake, Italy.

 

But the future could be even worse…

 

The future of Timbuktu

 

A city like Detroit has lost more than 700.000 residents in the last 30 years. Half a century ago it numbered almost 2 million inhabitants, today it’s down to 900.000 and the number keeps dropping. But Banjul, capital city of Gambia, faces the risk of complete sinking due to erosion and the rising of the sea level. Mexico City, too, is sinking, because of the aquifer that constitutes the city’s primary drinking water source. Each time one of its residents drinks a glass of water, the city subsides a little. In the last 100 years, it has sunk as much as 9 metres. Naples could potentially be destroyed by a Vesuvio eruption, as could San Francisco by the infamous “Big One”.

 

How Detroit looks like today

 

Past can’t be changed, but it’s in the present that we can do something to keep whole cities from disappearing or being forgotten. In Italy, a recent report by Legambiente and Serico-Gruppo Cresme has forseen that in 2016 4.395 will be the towns that, if no interventions are made, will suffer a progressive housing problems: 42,2% of Italian towns, 10,4% of the population. Among these, 1.650 are destined to become actual ghost towns, which means a fifth of all Italian municipalities, the 4,2% of the population. To the already numerous ghost towns will thus add more, in a spiralling motion of relentless abandon. 

For many, ghost towns are places with a mysterious charm, remote corners to experience the absence of man where there once was a heavy presence. Apocalyptic landscapes of a destroyed past, where a camera can capture a decaying but still attractive and seductive remain of someone else’s lives. But it’s not so for everyone…for those who lived there, it’s not a ghost town, it’s home disappearing into oblivion. In our journey through these villages, we met many people who sadly told us “We’ve been forgotten”. This is the truth. We have forgotten that in Italy there still are authentic and wonderful places, where old cultures and traditions still survive, where people live simply and with fond attachment to their roots. We’ve seen these villages emptied, now inhabited only by the elderly because the young have gone away. Those very elderly who already had to abandon their homes and now see their hometown disappear. Ghost towns can be enhanced by telling their story, as long as we don’t stay indifferent. They existed and still try to survive, but if nothing is done they will die with the last who lived there. We must help them be remembered, and most importantly avoid them falling apart forever. And if for many of them it’s already too late, for many others there’s still much that can be done to contrast their abandon and prevent a piece of Italy from being forgotten. For a place with no memory has no future, but future is what we create in the present…

(Translation by Marco Salvadori)

Link to ORIGINAL POST.

ITALIA PERDUTA GHOST TOWN

GHOST TOWN WEBSITE

Silent Hill: the real ghost town

ORIGINAL POST: SILENT HILL, LA VERA GHOST TOWN

The Silent Hill from the homonymous and renowned videogame franchise of psychological survival horrors, is described as an holiday resort on the Toluca Lake, divided into various areas, amongst which stand the residential district and the old part of the town. Built on an ancient Indian cemetery, the town had a troubled past that led it to be populated and abandoned many times, and then to become the place where a sect practised human sacrifices and necromancy. In the game, Silent Hill is constantly shrouded in thick fog, with rain, snow, and ashes coming down all year long. At the sound of air raid siren, the town turns into the “Otherworld”, a distorted parallel dimension where everything takes the aspect it would have after a terrible fire: everything burned, blood everywhere, and bodies hanging from the wall. A purgatory to cross and where one must face their inner demons or die. 

In 2006, a film based on the videogame was made, directed by Christopher Gans, in which the plot follows loosely the first and third episode of the series. In the film, Silent Hill is a West Virginia Ghost Town abandoned in 1974 due to a devastating fire. But in this case, the script does take inspiration from a real story… 

The nightmarish has, in fact, really existed. Its name isn’t Silent Hill, but Centralia, and it stands in Pennsylvania. The city rose in the first years of the XIX century over a deposit of anthracite, a 95% pure coal, that was extracted in huge quantities until the end of the century. During its golden age, Centralia was home to over 2.000 inhabitants, but in May 1962 a fatal accident scarred forever their fate…the coal-vein suddenly caught fire, blazing everywhere underground, and any attempt to put it out proved useless.

“This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn’s. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded 1,000 degrees. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers.” – David DeKok (1986) 

The real causes of the fire are yet unknown. Apparently, it started from the introduction of burning wastes into a disused deposit. What’s certain is that the consequences were disastrous. Clouds of ashes and smoke covered the city, the trees died, the asphalt melt and everywhere formed cracks and chasms. In the following twenty years the population was progressively evacuated. In 1979 a thermometer inserted into the ground to check the petrol level of a malfunctioning station, and much to everyone’s surprise it showed 77.8°C. In 1981 a twelve-years-old fell in a 46 metres chasm that suddenly opened under his feet; luckily, thanks to his brother’s help, he survived. 

Today, Centralia is a ghost town were only about ten people live. Many buildings were pulled down and dangerous carbon monoxide flows out from some of the cracks in the road. The fire underneath Centralia is still active and it is estimated it will be for hundreds of year. Its tragic fate turned it into a gloomy and sadly instructive touristic attraction.

Translation by Marco Salvadori

Image gallery on ORIGINAL POST

The legendary splendor of Babylon

ORIGINAL POST: IL LEGGENDARIO SPLENDORE DI BABILONIA

In a time long past, the city of Babylon enchanted all those who had the luck to see it. Its name echoed even in faraway lands and its splendour had become a legend, a myth to spread and pass on.

The story of Babylon, also known as Babel, which in Akkadian means “Door of God”, began in the III millennium B.C. and wasn’t but a small village until 2350 B.C. It then began to rapidly grow in size and importance until, from 1700 B.C. on, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Mesopotamia for 10 dynasties. The sixth king of Babylon was Hammurabi, who wrote one of history’s most ancient law codes, the Code of Hammurabi, today kept in the Louvre museum of Paris. The most well-known king was the second of the last dynasty, Nabucodonosor II, the one who destroyed the temple of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and deported its population. Most of the city remains that lasted to this day come from the time of his reign. The city was conquered by Cyrus II of Persia in 539 B.C., who turned into a Persian province, and in 331 B.C it was annexed to the empire of Alexander the Great, who was stunned by its beauty.
The city was most known for its ziggurat, a tower-like construction made from piled up truncated pyramids, representing man’s will to get closer and closer to the sky. It was most probably this ziggurat that inspired the myth of the Tower of Babel, told in the Genesis book of the Bible. The city was also known for the Ishtar Gate (today rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin) and the processional road beyond, for the pyramids, and for the splendid Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  

Babylon, repeatedly cited in the Bible as a metaphor for evil in contrast with the heavenly Jerusalem, was one of the most populated cites of the world and the first historical metropolis to surpass 200.000 inhabitants. Its end was foretold by the prophet Isaiah, but it effectively took place only two centuries after that, in 539 BC.
Today the ruins of Babylon lay in the town of Al Hillah, in Iraq, about 80 kilometres south of Baghdad. Not much is left of its ancient and legendary splendour, but various interesting remains have survived, like the palaces of king Nabucodonosor II, the Procession Street, the Lion of Babylon, the renowed Ishtar Gate, the Temple of Nin Makh and Nabushcari and the amphitheatre. Part of these are kept in museums world-wide. The whole archaeological zone covers a 30 square kilometres area, and the first excavations were conducted by Claudius James Rich in 1811. Unfortunately, during the American invasion if Iraq which began in 2003, the USA forces occupied the site for some time causing irreparable damage to that precious historical heritage…

Babylon's ruins

(Translation by Marco Salvadori) 
Image gallery on ORIGINAL POST

www.italiaperduta.com

Oradour Sur Glane

 ORIGINAL POST: ORADOUR SUR GLANE

In this southern France village, in the region of Limousin, took place an horrible Nazi massacre, carried out by an SS regiment the 10th of June, 1944. It is yet unknown whether it was for retaliation or to search for something or someone, but that morning an armoured SS regiment detached from the convoy headed to Normandy to fight the Allied troops, and entered Oradour, a village with 800 inhabitants that could in no way represent a military objective.
That morning of 66 years ago, the Nazi troops raided the village, rounded up the population in a park of the town’s plaza and went on to search every house and building, destroying everything.

Be it partisans, refugees, fugitives or hidden weaponry, the soldiers didn’t find what they were looking for. All men were separated from the women and children and brought inside the near barns, where some machine guns had been placed. These were used to shoot the harmless men in the legs, so as not to kill them but to leave them unable to run away. The barns were then burned down, with the wounded still inside.
After this massacre, the SS transferred the women and children inside the town church, and placed the machine guns at the entrance. They then threw a firebomb inside the church, causing more victims, and then gunned down the survivors who tried to escape.
A total of 642 of Oradour’s villagers lost their lives that day: 197 men, 240 women and 205 children. The houses were later burned down and the whole village was destroyed.
About twenty people who had escaped when the Nazis arrived survived and witnessed the atrocities that were carried out that day at Oradour sur Glane. After the war, De Gaulle decided that the village was not to be rebuilt, as testimony of French sufferance under Nazi occupation.
And so, Oradour remained a ghost town. A place worth visiting, for it urges a reflection on the senselessness of human wickedness.

(Translation by Marco Salvadori) 

www.italiaperduta.com

Ghost towns from Italy: Roscigno Vecchia

ORIGINAL POST: ROSCIGNO VECCHIA

WATCH IN FREE STREAMING THE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT ROSCIGNO

Many Italian ghost town are in Southern Italy, where a hostile nature and a lacking territory maintenance often cause disastrous rockslides, landslides, floods and earthquakes. One of areas most affected is the Salerno province, where the beautiful ghost village of Roscigno Vecchia is. 

Roscigno rises in the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, an UNESCO natural reserve. Thanks to its isolated position beyond the Alburni mountains, the town remained hidden for a long time to tourists and travellers, and thus kept its original urban structure.

Roscigno’s origins date back to the IV century b.C., but only in 1500 did it became an autonomous municipality, taking its name from the local dialectal word "Ruśignuòlo", meaning nightingale. Built on an unstable ground, however, Roscigno was often subject to landslides which, as time went by and buildings kept collapsing, forced the population to abandon the village. Not everyone left, though, and some remained there for the rest of their lives, like miss Dorina, who stayed in her house until the year 2000 when she passed away, last of Roscigno’s residents.
Roscigno is an out-and-out open-sky museum. Taking a walk through the village is like leaping in the past to discover the culture and the soul of seemingly lost rural community. Even today Roscigno’s streets are walked by flocks of sheep, horses, and farmers going to work in the fields, while the population kept a strong bond with its abandoned village, giving it a new life of some sort.
In 1997, the local “Pro Loco” (associations of volunteers seeking to promote the culture, the history and the activities of a particular place) created a museum to maintain the village’s history: it’s the “Museo della civiltà Contadina” (roughly “Rural Culture Museum”), where the relics and photographs of the past farmer community were collected.
We hope that Roscigno, together with the other ghost towns we’ve visited, will manage to keep existing as a model of ancient rural towns and that it will be known as such in all of its splendour.
Here is a passage from the documentary “Roscigno Vecchia e il Cilento dimenticato” (“Roscigno Vecchia and the forgotten Cilento”).

WATCH IN FREE STREAMING THE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT ROSCIGNO 

External links: 
http://www.roscignovecchia.it/
http://www.roscignovecchia.com/ 


Image gallery on ORIGINAL POST


(Translation by Marco Salvadori)

Ghost towns from Italy: Craco

ORIGINAL POST: CRACO

Placed on the summit of a hill overlooking the Cavone valley, in the region of Basilicata, Craco looks like a small-scale copy of the nearby Matera.
The ancient settlement, which reached a population of 2000, formed on the highest peak of this almost 7 million years old clayey valley. The settlement known as “Graculum”, which in Latin means “small ploughed field”, is documented for the first time in 1060 a.D., but the structure of the village actually dates to a period between 1154 and 1168. Thanks to its position, Craco became a strategically important military centre during the reign of Federico II.
During the XV century the city expanded around the four main palaces: the Maronna Palace with its monumental entrance, the Grossi Palace, with its beautiful vault and floreal pattern, the Carbone Palace, with its XV century monumental entrance, and the Simonetti Palace, with its peculiar medallions. 

In 1799 Craco joined Innocenzo De Cesare’s republican ideals, a movement of the rural middle class which sought to break the ties with the feudal lords, and then fell into silence, until a last, tragic event in 1963…
A large landslide destroyed part of the town, forcing the villagers to progressively leave their homes. The 1972 flood gave another hard blow, and the town slid some more along with the containment walls that were supposed to hold it up. Not everyone was willing to leave the town behind, and some remained there until the day they died.
Today, Craco isn’t sliding anymore and is constantly monitored. Its almost supernatural charms recalls its past glory, its ephemeral beauty seems almost an illusion…
Nature is slowly overtaking the town, a town still hiding mysteries and stories about ghosts claiming back their homes in the darkest nights. Some claim they heard harrowing screams and footsteps sounds, or saw dim lights behind the desolating void of an empty window.
Craco’s word-wide fame led it to a fate that it probably would never have imagined, that of a much sought cinema set. Many films were shot here, like Christ stopped at Eboli, King David, Terra Bruciata, Quantum of Solace, and even The Passion, where it was used as the background of Judas’s hanging.
At times Craco is visited by some tourists, attracted by its charm and by the mystery of abandon… unfortunately, though, the place’s politics are aimed towards its economic exploitation and not towards its artistic and cultural promotion, so tourists are charged to enter the village, and are imposed a fine if they don’t pay. This policy of pure economic exploitation stopped us from creating a Ghost Town episode about this beautiful, solitary and silent village…

Image gallery on ORIGINAL POST 

(Translation by Marco Salvadori)

Ghost towns from Italy: Galeria Antica

ORIGINAL POST: GALERIA ANTICA

Galeria Antica stands in the countryside north of Rome, just 8 km away from the Braccianese Way. A ghost town buried by vegetation like the ancient Maya ruins, an incredible maze of castle vestiges, Etruscan houses, tombs and places of worship.
Its origins get lost in the mist of time…probably founded under Etruscan domination with the name of Careia, it was a town of little importance guarding the southern borders of Etruscan territory. Later it was colonised by the Romans, as attested by some pointed arches and by some constructions built with the “opus incertum” technique. Galeria then fell during the Germanic invasions, and was populated again only during the Middle Ages. After being seized and destroyed by the Saracens, it was rebuilt and extended, and from 1276 it belonged to the Orsini family. After passing through many owners, it ended in the hands of the Sanseverino family, with whom the town suffered a slow decline until a terrible malaria epidemic decimated its population. In 1809, Galeria Antica was left abandoned.

Malaria was not rare at the time, as the place was subject to the frequent floods from the Arrone creek. What remains a mystery is the reason behind an abandonment so sudden that the people left behind not only tools and furnishings, but even the bodies of their dead, who were buried only half a century later…
After it was left deserted, Galeria became shelter for the shepherds and booty for the bandits, and today its only inhabitants are lizards, birds and vipers living in a twine of brambles and climbing plants. Amongst its ruins are still visible the St. Andrew’s Church’s bell tower, a still intact fortified bastion, the ancient main gate to the dead city, the guard tower still showing faded traces of its clock, and the vestiges of the castle, with its extraordinary system of gates and walls. In its square are still found the ghostly remains of the oven of the governor’s house and of a church. At the town’s secondary gate, the beautiful Roman access arch made of red bricks is still standing. But it is underneath that the ghost town hides its secret, a crypt with its labyrinth of tunnels that still are, and maybe will forever be, unexplored…
An old legend tells of a ghost minstrel named “Senz’affanni” (which means roughly “No worries”), who died around 300 years ago and who returns every year in Galeria, singing and playing for his beloved woman while riding a white horse. Many affirm they heard hoofs and moans, especially in winter. Those who do not believe in the story of the ghost say these sounds are made by the rushing Arrone creek.
Galeria Antica was declared a Natural Monument in 1999, but unfortunately it still remains prey to vandalisms and to unknown sects that use it at night for their ceremonies, attracted by the mysterious aura of a place oozing with death…

Image gallery on ORIGINAL POST 

(Translation by Marco Salvadori) 

 

Troy Paiva's night visions

ORIGINAL POST: LE VISIONI NOTTURNE DI TROY PAIVA

Troy Paiva is a talented American contemporary artist who has been exploring since 1970 his homeland, particularly California, walking abandoned and forgotten places. In 1989 he started taking photographs of these places, drawing the outline of a hidden and often inaccessible America. His shots are taken with an unique light and exposure that transform every abandoned building or object into something different from both what it was and what it has become. Fascinated by moonlit nights, Paiva manages to immortalise time and silence, to create suggestive images that look as if they belonged to a parallel universe, decadent and enigmatic. Using very long exposure times, up to 8 minutes, a strobe flash and light filters, he manages to create those particular light effects which transform objects and shadows.
These incredible pictures portray car shells, ruined buildings, ghost towns, gas stations, abandoned planes, old trains, motels, disused military bases, ghost ships and anything that was forgotten by man, which thanks to his creations enter a new dimension of space-time thanks to his creations. At the centre of his works is the effect of human activities on the environment, often with devastating consequences. Ecological denunciation is the fundamental theme of his art, exposing the problem of disposal of waste like aeroplanes, cars and ships. In fact, batteries, plastics, oil and various chemical substances disperse in the environment, damaging local flora and fauna. Even gas station are an often underestimated source of pollution. Beneath each station are held 20.000 litres tanks, and any leak can pollute wide underground areas, and eventually even the groundwater. 

Paiva’s night photography was published in two monographs: “Lost America” (2003) and “Night Vision” (2008). These books contain all of the artist’s urban exploration and the eerie, mysterious atmosphere he manages to extract from the ruins of the modern world and the nightmares of industrial expansion. “Our society”, says the photographer, “seems to be living in something of a ‘golden age’ of abandon, everything is renewed too easily, at times for no reason, within the time of a few years things become obsolete and so we can’t but get rid of them, scattering every kind of ruins around the world.”

You can find more of Troy Paiva’s beautiful pictures at his website:

http://www.lostamerica.com/index.html

Other links:

http://www.focus.it/natura-e-ambiente/natura/i-dipinti-di-luce-di-troy-paiva1234_98412_C9.aspx

Image Gallery on ORIGINAL POST

(Translation by Marco Salvadori)