L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano Selling Homes Throughout The Bay Area Adele Della Santina "The Right Realtor makes all the di昀erence." 650.400.4747 Adele.DellaSantina@compass.com www.AdeleDS.com DRE# 00911740 Expert in preparation, promotion, and negotiation! H igh in Molise's i n t e r i o r , t h e r o a d s c l i m b f o r a l o n g t i m e , o f t e n without giving anything away about what you'll encounter at their end. Then, almost without warning, a village shows up on a ridge, and you c a t c h t h e b e l l t o w e r f i r s t , before you've even worked out where the houses begin. When you finally park and s t a r t w a l k i n g , t h e d e t a i l s around you begin telling a s t o r y : s h u t t e r s t h a t s t a y closed most of the year, a few d o o r s t h a t o p e n o n l y i n August, streets that can feel empty, even at lunchtime. These places aren't "dead," but many now move to a dif- f e r e n t b e a t , o n e m a d e o f fewer residents, older resi- dents, and a lot of homes kept up by people who come back when they can, for weekends, holidays, family events. Molise lived with outmi- gration for decades: toward northern Italy, toward the coast, and, in earlier genera- tions, toward the Americas. In the inland mountain areas, the consequences have always been very practical: when the population thins out or ages, services get harder to defend, so a school class disappears, a bus route gets cut, and having a small alimentari store still open becomes an achieve- ment. Of course, it's tempting to reduce the whole story to abandonment, but that word can be lazy; what you actually see, moving from one village t o a n o t h e r , i s a s e t o f attempts – albeit uneven, sometimes modest, occasion- ally ambitious – to keep these places in the present tense. Castel del Giudice is, perhaps, the clearest example of a village that tried to reor- ganize itself around this idea. Instead of treating empty houses as an embarrassing symptom of a long-gone and forgotten vitality, it turned some of them into hospitali- ty, not to attract the mass tourism crowds but to achie- ve a steady, realistic flow of visitors who come for walk- ing, quiet days, local food, and the experience of staying inside a village rather than "near" one. Even if the num- ber of permanent residents doesn't suddenly rise, the positive effects of this attitu- d e a r e c o n c r e t e , b e c a u s e buildings stay maintained, jobs become possible, and t h e h i s t o r i c c e n t e r s t o p s looking like it's waiting to be locked up. B a g n o l i d e l T r i g n o , another Molisan village, hits you in a completely different way. It's dramatic, yes, but n o t i n a g l o s s y , p o s t c a r d sense. The town sits on the rock as if it grew there, with houses stepping up the slope and the Chiesa di San Sil- vestro set above everything o n a s p u r ; h o n e s t l y , y o u don't need much imagination t o u n d e r s t a n d w h y o l d e r communities chose positions like this: the landscape did h a l f t h e p l a n n i n g . A n d because villages like Bagnoli can't rely on summer alone, what keeps them active is often the calendar, with its small, repeated reasons for people to show up. A year- round artistic Nativity dis- play, which is one of the rea- sons Bagnoli is known, might sound like a detail, but in places with shrinking popu- lations, these are exactly the details that matter, because they give shape to the year, justify an open door, a week- e n d v i s i t , o r a b a r t h a t doesn't close for good. Agnone – perhaps the m o s t f a m o u s a m o n g t h e h a m l e t s i n t h i s a r t i c l e – m o v e s t h e m a i n p o i n t o f interest from Bagnoli's cliff- side image and toward work. It's known for bell-making t i e d t o t h e M a r i n e l l i foundry, and this is very important for a very simple reason: traditions survive differently when they are still a job. A living craft needs training, tools, orders, stan- dards, and the stubborn rou- tine of production; at the same time, it also gives visi- t o r s s o m e t h i n g m o r e grounded to look for when visiting, it makes them travel to understand how some- t h i n g i s m a d e , w h o s t i l l makes it, and why it lasted so long. In a region where so much has been lost to dis- tance and emigration, this type of continuity is a point of interest in itself. Fornelli , on the other h a n d , d o e s n ' t n e e d a b i g "project" to make its point: its compact and clear historic center can be walked in half an hour, and it's full of inte- r e s t i n g l i t t l e c o r n e r s t o explore. In an area where many towns are scattered or partly emptied, noticing how this small village remains attached to its life and habits i s , i n i t s e l f , a n a m a z i n g achievement. And then… not everything has to be rein- v e n t e d ; s o m e t i m e s w h a t holds is what was built well and cared for. And then there's Conca Casale, which brings the t o p i c b a c k t o i t s h a r d e s t edge. The village's smallness is immediately felt in the silence and the number of houses that don't open; yet, the village remains alive and well thanks to its food cultu- re, which is not only recogni- zed but also protected, as in the case of the Signora di Conca Casale, a traditional l o c a l s a l a m e t h a t o w n s a Slow Food Presidium. In a place this tiny, food is a real form of memory based on savvy hands, repetition, a n d p e o p l e w h o a r e s t i l l there to do it. Needless to say, none of this adds up to a fairy-tale e n d i n g , a n d i t s h o u l d n ' t . Tourism won't repopulate Molise on its own, and no single initiative can replace the generations who left. But tourism can still be useful when it's taken seriously, because it can keep buildings in use, fund repairs, support small businesses, and give local practices a public rea- son to continue. It can also pull memory out of the pri- vate sphere, out of family stories and summer returns, and put it back into the land- scape, where a village can still be visited, walked, and, in its own reduced but real way, inhabited. CHIARA D'ALESSIO The villages above the forest: Molise's high places today Left, the famous bells of Agnone, from the Fonderia Marinelli (Photo: Sergio Feola/Dreamstime.com); right: Bagnoli del Trigno, a striking hill village in Molise, where stone houses climb a rocky slope beneath the medieval Sanfelice Castle overlooking the Trigno Valley (Photo: Wirestock/Dreamstime.com) ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES

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