There is a fascinating Italian Facebook page with the title ‘Luoghi abbandonati’ (abandoned places). You can find it here:
(4) Luoghi Abbandonati | Facebook
It contains hundreds of photographs of (you guessed it) abandoned places. These may range from palatial residences to humble cottage. What is so extraordinary is that so many of these places appear to be tinged with the spectre of the ‘Marie Celeste’: they seem to have been left in the midst of their family life as if the inhabitants had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. There seems to have been very little foraging of what was left and even less of vandalism. Of course, nature has taken over: rotting floorboards, piles of decayed plasterwork, and a maze of cobwebs characterise them.
The contributors to the Facebook page are requested not to disclose where they found their abandoned place. This is for obvious reasons; so many of these places contain very collectable items and there may be also those dastardly beings around, the arsonists.
It’s, however, tantalizing that one is unable to visit some of these places for they are truly amazing – time-warps set in a swiftly changing world.
Our area is filled with many abandoned places ranging from houses to entire villages. I’ve described one of the most characterful of these abandoned villages in my post on Bugnano at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/abandon-all-hope-all-ye-who-enter-here/
If one wishes to climb higher up the mountains then there are several abandoned summer grazing settlements, some of which still have a church or chapel standing where once a year Mass is celebrated.
One doesn’t have to go far to discover these abandoned places. They can be found in any of our villages in the Media Valle and the Garfagnana.
I’m not sure whether I should give the name of one village quite near where I live. Anyway, this is what I found.
Here is the village shop, derelict for years and a victim of chain supermarkets:
The shop-owner must have been quite prosperous judging from the remaining fitments of his capacious twelve-roomed house. I just wonder where he/she fled to. America perhaps?
Sometimes a family tragedy may have caused the owners to leave their residence: a child who died in the house. Memory is, indeed, a strong force.
Anyway, whatever the reasons – and the major ones are economic – these abandoned places bear witness to the past in an almost unbearable degree.
Francis it is a sad reflection to our times I listened yesterday to BBC radio and the sadness of this kind of situation is truly utterly and unbearably overwhelming in fact I feel and am truly quite weepy as I with great difficulty write this due to the torture of shingles pain that is afflicting me! True these are sad times and abandonment of people places and things is de rigeur even little creatures do this for multifarious reasons. This is a fascinating subject and there are actually groups of people that go hunting such places not to vandalise or steal but to try to learn about the whys and wherefores as well as to catalogue with photis such events of abandonment also the whereabouts are never disclosed due to the fear of nasty people attacking such finds a little like putting salt on the agonising wounds. These places often have their ghosts as well as secrets such adventures for these modern day archaeologists of such properties!
Thankyou so much for your lovely comment.