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Abruzzo old villages
Almost all the mountain centers of Abruzzo, sitting tight and protected on the
peaks, were wise in their geographical setting and their own
morphology for two reasons: the extreme danger of the Middle Ages,
a period in which the majority of these villages arose, and the
business (but it could be said mono-culture) of sheep farming,
that has its kingdom in the mountains.
Built entirely out of live stone and mud, with a total, phobic
absence of wood, all the old villages of the Abruzzo mountains
express the obsessive attachment to stone, which is typical of the
Mediterranean civilization. These houses of bare stone, built
dose, one to another, to form a compact, protective mass in guise
of a wall (therefore called "case-mura", wall-houses), are
communicating their never-ending, anguishing need of defense in a
world of extended, feudal anarchy, of the critical evasion of the
central powers and therefore, the lack of organized systems of
defense. The outside perimeter of the houses enclosed the village
in a civilian (none the less effective), defensive circle.
On the outside there are few windows, almost as narrow as slits, placed in the upper
floors. A direct consequence of the dangerous times, the so called
"defense barriers" represented the only solid system of self-defense
for the local population. Real, fortified villages more than just
castles, these allowed a prolonged, defensive retreat for the
people, if necessary.
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For a very long space of time, going from the XI century to the French revolution,
this type of urban plan formed a typical model of a civilized
settlement in the Abruzzo mountains.
Nevertheless it is difficult
to understand the sense of these human settlements, often pushed
to the limits of habitability without putting them back in their
place in that system of economic production that organizes, in its
entirety, all life in the mountains: sheep farming.
In actual fact, as an economic activity predominant in Abruzzo for
almost three millenniums, therefore the origin of a particular
condition of life, the sheep farming has made an impression on the
territory not just limited to prints left in the pastures and
sheep tracks.
The great majority of the sheep, the huge flocks
that periodically moved from the upper pastures in the mountains
to the coastal plains of the Peninsula, are completely unconnected
with the inhabited center: the transhumant sheep always live out
in the open. They represented, however, a sort of additional
capital that never became directly part of the life or urban plan
of the mountain villages.
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The actual style of each single house
reflects this economy tied to a type of breeding which is based on
large herds of small animals. The impossibility of moving this
patrimony to the center of the village, the need of defence which
tended to limit the extension of the center to be protected, and
the steepness of the slopes, made a particular housing structure
necessary in the shape of buildings with three, four, or even five
or six rooms, one on top of the other.
Courtesy of
Regione Abruzzo Tourist Office
(c) 1997-2008 E. Massetti
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