few days ago my friend and professional photographer Anthony Renda has kindly sent some of his photographs depicting the ancient town of Old Briatico. He knew, Antonio, to tickle my mind "briaticotu" and I would have rushed to publish them on the pages of our blog. I tried, then, something that would frame the picture in his masterful way more worthy of my words and I found, thanks to the friendly Franco Vallone, writings and poems dedicated to this forgotten corner of Calabria. 
Briatico old for me has always been a constant presence in the histories of ancient times by the elders tell me, a hidden place of refuge for enjoy a few hours of separation from everyone and everything, a place where you feel the skin that life there has stopped. Immersing themselves in the valleys, climbing up on its ridges, extricating himself from his mess of rubble and shrubs, you always have the impression to be holding their breath, to hold their breath to resist the ways that you communicate to multiple and changing feelings. The scents of the wild, the noise muffled by loneliness, fatigue, exacerbated by the weight of history, the memories of those places you described and their secrets, blurry vision from intimate tears of joy at the renewed contact with a world and a time past. 
Unfortunately fate was not only the inclement with Briatico Vecchio, but especially men. The village, in fact, after the earthquake of 1783 was almost systematically undermined the recovery of materials during construction to the necessary reconstruction of the site today, so it was completely abandoned by its people and all local governments and the years that have succession. Often there is talk of a recovery of part of the house by the soprintendeza for cultural heritage, more often there has been public demonstrations of archaeological recovery "DIY" are often more harmful to the benefit of a good that deserves a very different kind of attention. To date, the many words are never followed the relevant facts and a serious concern Old to Briatico and its history. The old town is still there in silence, clinging to its hillsides with the tenacity that has always characterized him, hidden from view from its wild vegetation, waiting for a discovery that may not come. 
None better than Domenico La Torre was able to describe so vividly, almost share the old town of Old Briatico and its tragedy "On the road from the capital Briatico climbs towards the villages of S . Leo, St. Constantine and Potenzoni Mandaradoni after reaching St. Leo and the Plain Old omonina, looking to the left of the valleys appear Briatico Vecchio. Sunken in those valleys, between the districts "Piana del Campo", "Piana di S. Rocco and S. Leo," a hill rises to about 180 mt. high and its summit, between the tops of some isolated tree, you scoorgono ruins. those ruins overlooks the massive ground floor of a Swabian-Angevin castle that, on the north side of the hill sloping down to the overhanging stands with its mass dominates the dark and desolate valley and wild, singing a hymn to human events it sets silence and eternity. on the hill covered with rubble, easy refuge of crows and other wild animals, where now reigns the silence, broken only by the roar of the river valley that Murri expressway and go to fertilize fields or to scatter in the blue Gulf waters, there was once the ancient city of Briatico. The town lies on the summit of the cliff, over a large area sloping terraces on three sides of the castle up to the walls below, where four bastions incorporated within the walls completed the formidable natural defense of the settlement, consisting of the its topographic position that had escaped the massacres and looting of the Saracens in 933 and no less bloody raids by Turkish pirates after 1500, during the Ottoman domination in the Mediterranean. Two doors allow access to internal: one opened on the road that descended to the fountain and up on the other side of the valley, passing the Church Rock daventi S. Maria Knee, reached the Piana del Campo and descended to the Abbey of SS. Salvatore, where it branched off to the Rocchetta and Vibonati. The other, called Punta Gate opened onto a trail that connected Briatico S. Leo. The town, perched on the cliff for centuries, had experienced several earthquakes, when in the late morning of February 5, 1783 was shaken by a terrible earthquake and the tremors that ran out of nature had disappeared under a pile of rubble. The cataclysm had destroyed killing over 50 people, while the survivors were terrified, fled to seek refuge beyond the valleys. Today, after a little more than two centuries from that inauspicious date, those approaching the foot of the hill seen at the top, and some ruins on the hill it seems impossible that there may be the remains of Briatico. Yet it is! And who climbs laboriously and reaches the top of the cliff for a closer look at the terrible destruction, but especially to satisfy the inner desire to locate the home of their ancestors and to make a sad ritual of loving spiritual approach with missing, you suddenly finds himself in front of a sad spectacle, and face to face with the reality of life and death! not legend, nor fable, it is the first contact with a huge pile of rubble, killed and crumbled walls, piles of stones, skeletons of poor houses, buildings, churches and convents reduced to shapeless heaps of stones that cover the streets and roads. And from the tangle of brambles and thorns emerge the ruins of the Church of S. Lucia, St. Nicholas, the Annunciation, S. Michael S. Peter and Paul and the convents of S. Maria del Carmen, S. Domenico and S. Clear. These are the only ponderable elements of the past, the only witnesses to the disaster indicate that those who seek a spiritual contact with their people than the place where they lived and acted. The first contact with the dead city is unforgettable because it revealed to our senses the picturesque charm that stimulates the mind to reconstruct what the eye fixed in memory. And in advancing religious silence on piles of stone walls killed to observe the breakdown and to make a sad rite of love, feel the spirits hovering over the ruins of the disappeared and is brought back in thought to redo the path of time and memory. Then leap from the chest of memories to our minds the stories of our ancestors on the tragedy experienced by their ancestors and the beautiful stories of their lives. It is established then between the man who wanders the scene of the drama and shadow wandering over the ruins that you want spiritual contact that speaks to the heart and fills the mind with sadness and melancholy. It draws from that contact is the teaching that al di là delle nostre modeste persone esiste la natura, possente e perfetta finchè vincoli a sè le forze smisurate del Cosmo, ma inesorabile ed implacabile quando le scatena con tutta la loro energia per annientare il genere umano e le sue opere. Il 5 Febbraio 1783 confermò, ancora una volta, la fragilità dell'uomo di fronte alle forze della natura, quando sul quadrante degli esseri viventi è segnata la parola fine!"
Qui invece alcune bellissime poesie dedicate al romito abitato: Sono qui tra i ruderi
dell'antico villaggio raso al suolo
da un
underground collapse. Nascimento
had people here,
now disappeared, and I recognize the ruins
the father thereof.
I look. A large storm surges
of herbs and stones that cover the hub
wall climbing plant
throws a cloak of fantastic flowers
that at the blowing of the wind changes its
its colors,
and reliable source
pours water so pure that
villagers new
They come here to drink in the village extinct,
portati
inconsapevolmente
a collegarsi ai padri
nella continuità di un liquido fluire.
Discopre la Natura
da tal continuità una sua legge;
onde non v'è frattura
che non si colmi in veste di bellezza,
e non lava indurata
che non accolga germi di ginestre;
ed è sì pronto,
sotto nubi ancora oscure,
lo spiegarsi dell'iride
ch'ella è madre
per quando sembra to us to be stepmother.
In light of where he lives and s'avvolge
reasons throb of the Whole.
Immersed in this
god of light
contingent event not matter,
but what our soul understands
the serene vastness of vision, and hearing
that our dead are still with us, and vibrate
foreboded
of unborn children,
and feel that the moment of our life is sacred because
full of eternal and the infinite.
Anthony Anile
I find myself wandering aimlessly
immense olive grove surrounds me.
with me none, only
Murri,
with the sound of its sweet waters,
gives me the right
and accompanies me in my solitude
behind me
I see the sea just before I
and thickening
growing weeds. I'm afraid
yet continuous, let me win
da un richiiamo dolce
soave, lontano,
il richiamo del sapere.
Ad un tratto
vedo aprire l'essere dei miei sogni
delle mie notti insonni:
“Briatico Vecchio”
La paura scompare,
il cuore si allarga,
la bocca mi si apre,
mi si sgranano gli occhi.
Fermo restando
ti guardo Briatico mio.
Quieto, immobile
e, nel contempo, fiero ed austero
ti stagli dinnanzi ai miei occhi.
surrounded by brambles and gorse
sun and inhabited by snakes.
offer shelter only to some cunning little vixen thief and
and only in this
your same name will match.
Briatico how beautiful my
how big,
but what about today of your virtues?
who is love, respect, justice
abbruttire fraternal friendship as they are by your successors
but time will come ...
Just when I think of this,
I can not help but cry,
driven not only by pain,
despair and anger.
Anonymous
Antonio Renda Thanks for the wonderful photos, Franco Vallone for the poems and the sources and those who love and have never forgotten Briatico Vecchio.
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