Upper Irpinia: the reborn villages
On 23 November 1980 the Irpinia earthquake struck these villages of the Upper Irpinia at their heart. This is not a story of ruins, but of rebuilding: communities that chose to stay and start again. These are the reborn villages, between memory and future.
7 places
◆ VillagesTeora
Teora (AV)
In 1980 Teora lost more than a hundred inhabitants and nearly all its houses. The rebuilt village keeps, in its old core, the walls left standing like scars.
◆ VillagesCairano
Cairano (AV)
Perched on a crag above the Ofanto valley, the village spirals up to the rock where the wind never falls silent: here the roots run back as far as the Iron Age.
◆ VillagesSant'Andrea di Conza
Sant'Andrea di Conza (AV)
The bishop's palace and the cathedral of a tiny village that for centuries housed the bishops of Conza, after Conza had been abandoned to landslide and earthquake.
◆ Views & panoramasGuardia Lombardi
Guardia Lombardi (AV)
The name says it all: a Lombard lookout at almost a thousand metres, where on clear days you can see the Vulture and the Picentini together. The wind here never stops, and the old folk say it carries the voices of the villages below.
◆ Sacred artAbbazia del Goleto
Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi (AV)
Among the fields of upper Irpinia, the ruins of the abbey founded by Saint Guglielmo da Vercelli open to the sky: the Febronia tower, the silence and the golden stone at sunset.
- ◆ Villages
Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi
Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi (AV)
At 19:34 on 23 November 1980 the earth split open here and the town became the symbol of a national wound. Today the risen borgo (old village) lives alongside its empty spaces, and the Castello Imperiale watches over a square that has learned how to begin again.
- ◆ Villages
Andretta
Andretta (AV)
An amphitheatre of honey-coloured houses looking out over the Ofanto, homeland of emigrants and of that Ferdinando De Rosa who tried to kill a king. The old centre, stitched back together after the earthquake, is one of the most elegant in the Alta Irpinia.