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The town I came from
Welcome to our article, The town I came from.
Dear readers, I am an emigrant, so, let me tell you about the town
I have come from. My native town is Genzano di Lucania. Anyhow, when we are in a foreign country, I believe that it does
not matter where we come from, we are always proud of our heritage; we should
be proud of it, because it makes us feel better.
But we who had to leave our native towns, to
find a better way of life somewhere else, when we are asked this question where
we come from, we want to avoid a straight answer, for fear that the people that
are asking us want to upset us. Apart from that it can be a philosophical
question meaning where we human have come from, or if we come from another
country. So, we are careful to answer that.
While we try to answer their question the
best way we can, we think about our fife journey and the town that we have come
from; in my case I would say I have come from Genzano di Lucania. Then, while
we continue to answer their questions; we start thinking that we might be born
with our own destiny, since we left our native town, at least some of us
believe that we have a destiny. You see for this reason I believe that my
destiny has played a part and has taken me away from my native town.
Some people might think that you don’t like
your native town, and that is the reason why you left it; 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 our native towns or country where we are born, if we were not proud of our heritage
we would be unworthy of ourselves, so, I hope that you understand why I want to
talk about Genzano my native home town. After all, Genzano di Lucania is a good
town that one can be proud to have come from, so, let us talk about it.
Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?
Click on the link above to see the map,
another map is in our article, Genzano di Lucania.
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The town where I came from.
Dear readers, allow me to describe the town I left, when I migrated to Australia. Now, I want to talk about my native town, so that you can understand the ways that we used to live in this town when I was young. We want to do that to compare the difference, and to perceive and feel my life story in the same way and depth as I have felt it, while I was living my young life at that place. About my life in the farm I have written several articles, they are at these addresses:
My life my struggles, An old man life story , A man life journey, An old man story,
My farm life experience.
Anyhow, let us go back to the time when I was
young, to describe the town and their costumes, so, we can understand the ways
that these people have lived their lives for centuries; 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 ways of living, which left a
lot to be desired for, if we compare it to the ways that we live in Australia today.
The town where I came from is situated in
Southern Italy; its full name is ‘Genzano Di Lucania’, to distinguish it from
‘Genzano di Roma’. But when we talk about Genzano, it causes a curious fact in
Australia, because to most people living in Australia the name of ‘Genzano’
sounds like ‘Cinzano’ which is a famous wine brand. So, they start asking
questions whether my native town is the town where the 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 have some good
vineyards in the town territory, and they make good wines.
The wine that we made from our vineyards was for our family use, but sometimes we would sell the extra wine locally. I will tell you more about this wine making in the article: Wine making the old ways
But talking about wines and wine making, it
makes me think of something unusual and scenic in this town of Genzano, which
people from outside town and not familiar with this set up would be amazed to
see; because the people of Genzano make their wines inside large caves, dug in
the walls of a chasm. Now let us imagine how all this wine making in the cave
came about, in this southern region of Italy. To understand that, let us look
at the ancient towns of this region of Italy.
 |
| L`Annunziata church |
Old towns of southern Italy.
Now, let us go back to those ancient times
when people used to live in the caves everywhere, then they evolved and built
towns; the towns were built according to their geographical position and the
need of the people. So, the town of Genzano and other towns, were built
according to 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 know
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 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 hometown
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, to see what I have just said, you have to visit my original article and hope that the photos load up.
Today this old massive building is the Town Hall of Genzano, but in the past it was the castle of Genzano. From this side today, it looks easy to reach the castle walls, but it was not so in the past.
The old Genzano town.
Here we need to say
that the history of the existence of Genzano is ancient, as there is some
evidence that the town of Genzano existed when Christianity began in the Roman
times. Some historian says that the Romans started Genzano town about
the VI century BC when they had this ‘Pagus Gentianum settlement to control
this part of their territory. But in this story we are talking about Genzano of
the thirteenth century or there about; it is built on a strip of land 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.
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 lived in rugged accommodations, these rugged accommodation could have been caves where the terrain was right to dig caves, but they were not real cavemen, as they were just people who later 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 we would like to describe the ancient nature of these caves, and why these caves were made, and who made them.
In the beginning of
this 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 forming two
deep chasms; which by memory I consider to be 30 meter plus in depth. So, the
ancient part of Genzano town was built on the remains of the edge of an old
high plateau, which the rainwaters 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 their own town of Genzano, these people must have been living somewhere
else. It is most likely that they were living in the caves of 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 large caves are
reasonably safe from cave-ins; an average cave can 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 to
think for a moment, how hard it must have been to dig in the walls of the
chasms to make caves, it must have been a mammoth of a job to dig those caves.
So, we can easily
say that life is a struggle, as it was a struggle even then to dig those caves.
In fact, we believe that life then was much harder than today. Because to hand
excavate those caves must have been hard work, 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
this happened a long time ago, nobody knows who the first inhabitants of the caves
were, or where they came from, and how many of these caves they made in the
beginning.
Who could they be?
We believe that the first inhabitant of this
region was a group of shepherds grazing their herds and having found shelter
from the cold winds or rain in the chasm, 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 were 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.
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. About the Greek people there is another story, so, we will come back later to tell you about it in, Genzano Greek chasm and Madonna story
But now we want to tell you, about when the
inhabitants of the caves build their own houses on this strip of land at the
top of the chasms, which later became the town of Genzano.
Now there is a legend about the name of
Genzano; there were two lovers (Yens and San, since in the local dialect 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 nobody knows.
Anyhow, whatever we can say about our native
town, when somebody asks me, where you come from? I will say, Genzano is the
town I came from.
That is all for this article, see you soon in
our next article,
To see more klick on this link, The town I came from.
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