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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Old towns of Southern Italy
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Old towns of southern Italy
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Old towns of southern Italy
Dear readers, this is the continuation of our
last post, the town I came from. So now, let us go back to our discussions
about the towns of Southern Italy; in fact 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 in the same region of Genzano and similar in the ways that the towns were built in the middle-age.
Very old town
Matera
This part of the old town of Matera is one of the extreme ways of how the towns were built then. What we are seeing here in the town of Matera is an old castle, today I believe it is called palazzo, Lanfranchi, as you can see, it is a very old strange place.
This is a very old church in Matera town, the church is called, Saint Peter cavoso, as the name suggests part of it has been dug out inside the rocks, or sassi as they are called over there, but there are a lot more dug outs in Matera and this is all explained, if you read our text.
-----------------------Here under is a report that I found on the internet;
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 post; See you soon.
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Genzano it story
old towns of Southen Italy
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Genzano is the town I came from
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Genzano it story
old towns of Southen Italy
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Genzano is the town I came from
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