The town I have come from
Welcome to my hub (22) Genzano is
the town I came from,
Photo of the oldest part of today the existing Genzano, as you know there are several stories how this town came into existence.
The Corso is one of the main street of Genzano, even though in this photo seems deserted, on Sundays afternoon and evenings, there would be a lot of people strolling up and down.
The town I have come from
Where we come from is the question? So, we
start thinking that life is the best gift that God or Mother Nature has given
us, it is always wonderful to think about our life and trying to live it the
best way we can; at the same time we are wondering sometimes where we come from
and most of us would like to know why and what is the reason for being here on
earth; some of us have their own beliefs or just we go along with other people
beliefs, but this reasoning is about where we come from originally, whether God
has created us or we are just a product of evolution.
But here we are not talking about this
philosophic question, we are only talking about where we come from, meaning
whether we are local people that have lived there for many generations, or we
are new to this place, this is what other people want to know. So, when you are
not living in your native town anymore, because you have left your native town
and gone to live somewhere else to earn a living, then the most likely question
that people would always ask would be; where you come from?
While we try to answer their question the
best way we can we start thinking about our own fife journey and indeed about
the town that we have come from; in my case I would answer I have come from
Genzano di Lucania; so, Genzano is the town I came from. Then we may start
thinking that we might be born with our own destiny, since we see that there
were certain reasons why we left our native town, at least some of us might
believe we do have a destiny, just because we would like to believe that it is
so. You see for this reason I believe that somehow my own destiny has played a
part and has taken me away from my native town. Some people may say that since
you left your town for your own personal reasons, you would forget about your
native town altogether, and you would not say a word about it since this town
could not give you what you wanted when you were young, so you left your native
town.
Some people might think that you don’t like
your native town, but it is not like that at all, because wherever you are born
and grow up it is going to be your native town for the rest of your life. You
see every one of us is proud of its native town or country, if we were not
proud of our heritage we would be unworthy of ourselves, so, I hope that you my
dear readers understand why sometimes I would like to talk about Genzano my
native home town. After all Genzano di Lucania is really a good town that one
could be proud of to come from, so let us talk about Genzano di Lucania the
town that I come from.
Click
on the link above to see the map, another map is in our hub, Genzano di
Lucania.
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The town where I came from
Dear readers, allow me to
describe to you the town where I was born, lived when I was young and later on
I had to leave; because of the changes that were occurring at that time, it
would not be financially sound to continue to work this small family farm; so, I left our farm and migrated to
Australia. Now, I would like to talk about my native town so that you could
understand the ways that we used to live in this town, at the time when I was
young; after all we want also to compare the ways of living of those time with
today’s ways of living: we would like to do that not only to compare the
difference, but also because you may perceive and feel my life story in the
same way and depth as I have perceived and felt it, while I was living my young
life at that place and at that particular time. About my life in the farm I
have already written several hubs and some of them you can check them out at
these addresses:
My life my struggles, An old man life story , A man life journey, An old man story,
My farm life experience, and there are more.
As we were saying the town that we are
talking about here is the town where I was born and lived my youth before I
came to Australia, its name is Genzano di Lucania.
Therefore let us go back to the time when I
was young, so that I could describe to you the town and their costumes, so
that, you may be able to understand the ways that these people have lived their
lives for centuries; And therefore the reason why they were living the way they
were living at the time when I was young. Now because I was born there I was
caught in their own ways of living, which left a lot to be desired for, if one
compares it to the ways that we live our lives in Australia nowadays, and also
most of the advanced countries in the world.
The town where I came from happens to be
situated in Southern Italy; its name is ‘Genzano’ but its full name is ‘Genzano
Di Lucania’, only to distinguish it from ‘Genzano di Roma’. But when we talk
about this town, we just talk about Genzano, and this causes a curious fact of
life here in Australia, because to most people living in Australia the name of
‘Genzano’ sounds very much like ‘Cinzano’ which is a famous wine brand. So they
start asking questions whether my native town is the town where such a good
wine originated. But unfortunately ‘Genzano’ the town which I have come from
has got nothing to do with that famous wine brand. Although we had and still
have some good vineyards in the town territory, and they make good wines, and
here we have to add that also my family owned some vineyards at the time when I
was young, from which we used to make good wines too. The wine that our family
made from our vineyards was mainly for our own family use, but usually it was
more than our family could use, so we would sell the extra wine locally. I will
tell you more about this wine making in another hub, here is the link to check
it out: Wine
making the old ways
But talking about wines and wine making, it
makes me think of something very unusual and scenic in this town of Genzano,
which people from outside town and not familiar with this sort of set up would
be amazed to see. (Check our hub, Wine making the old way in the subtitle, life
and sound of the chasm) Now, if we were to say that the people of Genzano make
their wines inside cellars, which are large caves, dug in the walls of a chasm,
it would certainly leave too much to your imagination, and you may be forgiven
to imagine that there are cavemen too living in these caves, but let us see or
imagine how all this wine making in the cave came about, in this southern
region of Italy. But first let us look at the ancient towns of this region of
Italy.
Old towns of southern Italy
So now, let us go back one more step in time;
to those ancient times when some people of this region used to live in the
caves, not only in Genzano the town I come from, but also in other towns of
this region, as we are going to see in the following explanation
In the old
continent of Europe as well as in Southern Italy, lots of medieval towns were
built on a rugged hill, or something similar for reason of safety, as we all know
that in ancient times and in the Middle Ages towns had to be built in such
positions, in order to make it hard for the enemy to get into town, and easy
for the inhabitants to defend the town from aggressions. Today some of these
towns are a sight to see like this photo that I have come across on the
Internet. This here under is one of the scenic towns of southern Italy; it is a
bit similar to my home town of Genzano.
Very old town
Matera
And here I quote;
It seems as though
everyone in this region moved into caves, which came to be known as i sassi
(stones). You would think Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano (which begin at
Piazza V. Veneto) were just typical Italian hilltowns until you realize the
"houses" are all windowless grottoes with damp walls and earthen
floors, where the family's animals slept side-by-side with the humans.
Far from being
uncivilized, these rock towns had intricate hydraulic systems that kept water
fresh and cool year round. Eventually the caves gained façades and roofs, but
the interiors remained virtually unchanged. Nearly 15,000 people were still
living in them in 1952, when the government finally declared them unhealthy and
outlawed their use. There are several places where you can visit a typically
furnished sasso: the most indicative is probably the one at Vico Solitario 12,
in Sasso Caveoso.
End Of quote:
Dear readers, we
have taken the liberty of showing you another place in southern Italy, so that
in a way it shows you the way that some of the people of this region used to live
for a very long time, the reason for doing this is to show you that Genzano the
town I have come from has a similar story, but the inhabitant of the caves left
the caves a long time ago to live in the town. So let us go back to talk about
Genzano again.
The old Genzano town
Here we need to say
that the history of the existence of Genzano the town I come from is very
ancient, as there is some evidence that the town of Genzano already existed
when Christianity began in the Roman times. Some historian says that perhaps
were the Romans that started Genzano town about the VI century BC when they had
this ‘Pagus Gentianum settlement to control this part of their territory, there
are other stories also. But in this story that we are talking about here is that very old and
part of Genzano of the thirteenth century or there about that is built on a
strip of land which is situated between two chasms, and these chasms are
situated at the edge of a high plateau 588 meters above sea level; and the
modern Genzano is a continuation of the ancient part of this town, which has
kept steadily growing onto the high plateau itself up to the present days.
In the old
continent of Europe as well as in Southern Italy, lots of medieval towns were
built on a rugged hill for safety reasons, some of these people that went to
live in these towns were people that used to live nearby, in all sorts of
rugged accommodations, some of these rugged accommodation could have been caves
where the terrain was right to have caves, so, some of them used to live
in these caves, but they were not real cavemen, as they were just people who
later on became the inhabitants of the towns. Also the town of Genzano has a
similar story and a large part of its inhabitants came from these caves below
the town itself. And here dear readers we would like to describe in general
terms, if you don’t mind us telling you the ancient nature of these caves, the
terrain where they stand, and perhaps take an educated guess why these caves
were made there in the first place, who made them and why they have been made
there.
In the beginning of
current Era, because of the nature of the terrain of the high plateau which was
sandy at one end, allowed the rainwater to erode the soil easily away, forming
two chasms of considerable depth; which by memory I would consider them to be
30 meter plus in depth. So Genzano that part of the ancient town was built on
the remains of the edge of an old high plateau, which the rainwater’s had
slowly dug and taken away the soil downstream, leaving a high strip of land
which was narrowing till the chasms met. And upon this triangular and narrow
piece of high land, the inhabitant of Genzano began to build their own town.
But before they
built or rebuilt their own town of Genzano, some of these people must have been
living somewhere else, and they must have overgrown the place where they were
living in, and this was part of the reason they started building their house in
Genzano town. Now, the place that they could have been living in was in the caves
in the chasm, which their forbears as the first and permanent inhabitants of
this region had dug in the walls of the chasms.
The walls of the
chasms being Tuffaceous and very compact, and sandy in nature with a few layers
of sandstone at different levels, it had been possible for the first inhabitant
to dig in the walls of the chasms and make a cave. And the caves although they
are large they are reasonably safe from cave-ins; an average cave could be 6 or
7 meters wide, and 6 or 7 meters high at the entrance, and some twenty meters
long becoming a bit smaller at the far end.
Now if you stop and
think just for a moment, how hard it must have been to dig in the walls of the
chasms in order to make caves, and then also to carry all the soil outside and
away from the caves, even if they used to dump the soil at the bottom of the
chasms, and then wait for a good torrential rain to take away the soil
downstream, it would really be a mammoth of a job to dig those caves.
So here we can
easily say and demonstrate that life is and always will be a struggle, as it
was a struggle even then to dig those caves. And we believe that perhaps life
then was much harder than nowadays. Because to hand excavate those caves must
have been hard work indeed, and it must have taken them ages and millions of
men’s hours, as there are lots of caves in the chasms, in fact it could be that
there are one hundred caves in Genzano territory. Now because all this happened
a very long time ago, nobody these days seems to know who they were the first
inhabitant of the caves in the chasms, or where they came from, and how many of
these caves they made in the beginning.
Who could they be
Who could they be?
The first inhabitant of this region might
have been just a group of shepherds grazing their herds, and having found a
sort of shelter in the chasm, from the cold winds or rain in winter times, they
stopped there and tried to improve this natural shelter; so they started to dig
these caves for themselves and for their flocks. Or they could have been people
that were fleeing away from their enemies, and having found a sort of shelter
in the shape of the chasms, they stopped there and made it their home. Really
they could be both, and perhaps even more different groups of people.
Today one of the chasms is still called the
Greek chasm from the elders of Genzano, and this means that at least sometime
in the past people from Greece have lived there, or owned one of the chasms
since they were living there. About the Greek people there is still another
story, which is somehow different in nature from what we are trying to say at
this moment, so we will have to come back to it later on, when we are ready to
tell you the story of the Greek chasm and the Madonna story.
But now we would like to tell you, about when
the inhabitant of the caves build their own houses on this strip of land at the
top of the chasms; which later on would become the town of Genzano, and which
was named very likely after one of their leaders, or perhaps it is indeed an
ancient name, as there is a legend about two lovers (Yens and San, since even
today in the local dialect this name of Genzano is pronounced Yensan) or was it
this Roman name of Pagus Gentianum that slowly changed to Genzano, we can only
guess, therefore the name of the town and the time when Genzano came into
existence as a town for the first time nobody knows but in another hub that we
are going to call, Genzano di Lucania history, we are
going to describe what we believe happened. So, see you there.
Anyhow whatever we can say about our own
native town, whether we like it or not when somebody asks me, Where you come
from? I will say, Genzano is the town I came from.
That is all for this hub; See you soon.
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