I thought ghost towns were largely a stateside phenomenon, but as it turns out, Italy may have us beat. One source I saw claimed that the country has six thousand of them. I can’t say why there seem to be so many, but I’d speculate that the old Italian propensity for settling on hilltops may be part of the answer. Perching atop a mountain may have made sense in middle ages when you might have to defend against invading Ottomans, but could be less desirable in the modern day.
We got to see three of them while there. In each case, they were a stone’s throw from a newer, active district. Two were what you might imagine, living spaces almost frozen in time with vintage furnishings. One had been turned into a fenced-off ethnographic park, apparently run by its former residents or their kids. As happy as I am to see an effort made to preserve places like these, the idea of walking around with a guide was not our vibe, so we took a couple exterior shots and moved on.
.
.
The other two were truly abandoned, though one more recently than the other. We believed the older town still had at least one squatter, based on signs of occupancy around one building, and the fact that a small and very friendly dog, by its demeanor definitely a companion and not a stray, greeted us as we walked into town and joyfully followed us around the entire town. We rewarded it with belly scritches and some of our water on our way out.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This other town, abandoned around 2009 as calendars found in some homes would attest, had much more left behind. In many cases we came across practically fully furnished apartments. It also was a more stressful exploration, as there were construction crews in certain quarters that were starting to do renovation work, and we felt we needed to keep a very low profile as to not get discovered and chased off. It is debatable whether that was necessary, as the Italian attitude toward trespassing in places like this seems a lot more laid back than ours, but better safe than sorry.
The first shot from here is of horse tack, hanging from a hook in a burned out room whose walls and ceiling was thick with soot and tar. It was very dark, with just a bit of reflected daylight creeping in from the hallway. It was so dim that it took me a while to even recognize what I was looking at; I was momentarily worried that that it was a suicide or murder victim hanging there. It took a thirty second exposure and a lot of brightening afterwards to get the shot you see below.
.
Other highlights from here included some dramatically overgrown courtyard stairs, homes with seemingly every possession left behind, as well as the obligatory Lonely Chair. It also featured an appearance by the very rare Lonely Hand Cart.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I wish I had taken more exterior shots here, but in some cases work crews were so close that it just felt safer to minimize our time on the streets. And, though I got a truly huge bruise here when I nailed my thigh on a protruding bolt, it might have been the most fun shoot on the entire trip.
Thanks for checking out this post! There is more from this Italian trip coming soon.
T A B U L A R A S A photography 