It is fifteen years since the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Abruzzo at 3.32am on 6 April 2009, taking the lives of 309 people and leaving 70,000 homeless in around fifty-six towns. My heart is with those who lost so much… the victims, their loved ones, all those who were displaced, the many still working hard to recover and rebuild in the long years following.
I’m often asked by those who’ve read of the earthquake in my books how Fossa is now and what happened to the centuries-old house lived in by generations of my family that I was so fortunate to have stayed in too. Well, the house remains damaged, as it was the day of the earthquake, since looted and at the mercy of the elements. I’m unsure of its future at this stage, that is in other hands. Where it sits in the worst hit, ‘zono rosso’, red zone of Fossa largely remains empty and often called a ‘ghost town’. However! I’m very pleased to say that in parts of Fossa, especially around the outskirts, there is reconstruction work being done and people are returning to the town. I always held hope this would happen and it’s truly wonderful to see it seems to be. Che possa continuare!!
So in the spirit of the town’s hopeful return, I thought I’d share this photo from when Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni were there in 1975 and Fossa was bustling and lively with much going on. I can’t be certain of the festival but I’m guessing San Antonio – perhaps someone recognises it. The parade is coming down towards the bar and main piazza (I can see Nanna Francesca beaming!) and it’s wonderful it appears pretty much the entire village are involved, all ages. Fossa has long been a thriving, beautiful town and has so much history. I look forward with much hope to its dwellings and streets being full of life like this once again along with all those across Abruzzo. ❤️🌠
This artwork is called, Nature Thriving by Gianna Fallavollita and if you look closely, you’ll see it is a front door in Fossa, which has been a ghost town since the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake. I have to say, it evokes many different emotions to see the town where my ancestors lived over more than six centuries, now gradually being taken over by nature, forever entwined with Monte Circolo on which it sits.
Gianna, whose parents are from Abruzzo and who has a strong connection to her own Italian heritage, contacted me to tell me how much Mezza Italiana resonated with her and I was so touched and thrilled when she said this has also inspired her to create a series of artworks depicting my family’s town of Fossa in, ‘Where the Wild Things Thrive’, a group exhibition currently on display until Sunday 26th November, 2023 at Back2Back Gallery, 57 Bull Street, Cooks Hill, Newcastle.
My deepest thanks to you, Gianna, and for your beautiful art. I hope so too. I’m still heartbroken about what happened to Fossa and many other beautiful towns in Abruzzo after the earthquake. Particularly that it will soon be 15 years, in April, that most residents have been unable to return to their homes in Fossa. Some of these houses, like my family’s one, which I wrote about in Mezza Italiana, have belonged to the same families for hundreds of years.
I’ve long had a love of art and it feels particularly special to discover my writing may in some small way have played a part in some of Gianna Fallavollita’s artworks. I hope that together these may convey how natural disasters continue to affect a place and its inhabitants long after the media reports have faded away.
Still, it’s lovely to look back, especially to see Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni next to me on the front steps the day I arrived as well as beautiful Fossa when there was no hint of the earthquake to come more than a decade later. And I still can’t get over the rich blueness of the sky some days up there in the Apennine Mountains! No filters or tricks on these photos, just nature at its most exquisite. Thank you for taking the Mezza Italiana journey with me and for sharing your stories too. Grazie infinite cari amici! Zoe xx
When we cook the same dishes that our ancestors cooked it connects us to them, to our history and it also brings us back to something within ourselves that we mightn’t have thought of for some time or something we hadn’t yet discovered. Just the aroma of a dish cooking can release a trigger of deep memories that lets things rise up and take shape in us.
The maccheroni Calabrese (pasta rolled on a knitting needle for its shape) has a richer red sauce with melanzane and chillies that Francesca’s town of Palmi is known for. And the chitarra pasta has bitter, wild greens added to the passata, inspired by Maddalena walking hillsides near Fossa picking wild greens into her upturned apron and taking them back to cook with. It also has pecorino cheese on top because that part of Abruzzo is known for its sheep.
If you have any link to Abruzzo, I warn that this footage may be hard to watch as those filming go right into the most intimate parts of homes, which may just happen to be yours or of someone you know. That said, the young men filming have done so with respect, have only entered houses where the doors were already open and have concealed the name and whereabouts of the village. (Considering my own family’s house is one of those looted since the earthquake, I appreciate this.) By the end, they also appear to be overwhelmed by all they’ve seen.
Came across this in an old, cardboard box of photographs of my grandmother’s:
Came across this lovely tree when I was walking from the house in Fossa along the road to the village cemetery. It stands looking to the Aterno Valley and the Apennines in Abruzzo with Gran Sasso in the distance.
Walking around Fossa, along lanes that become so steep and narrow they merge into steps or descend into tunnels, I began to notice all the different doors I passed. Some with stylised, door furniture of lion heads or dragons and beautifully varnished wood, others crude, weathered timber, or painted mission brown.
With Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni outside the family house in Fossa when I arrived there for the first time all those years ago (bearing in mind by then I’d been travelling and living out of a backpack for several months!!)
Coming up this street in Fossa always feels like being ‘almost home’ whether returning from nearby L’Aquila or a long flight from Australia. For just around the next corner is my family’s house and while it has centuries of history, to me it also has that comforting feel like coming to stay at your grandparents’ house.
Since the earthquake, my family’s house in Italy remains too damaged to stay in. Much of the village remains empty. And now, thieves have broken into the house. They mainly upturned drawers adding to the mess of earthquake damage, since belongings inside are mostly of sentimental value, but of course it is another blow.
… at around dawn while most of the village still slept.
The steeple of Santa Maria Assunta in Fossa… the church that sits opposite my family’s house in Abruzzo. It was lovely to walk along the lanes below and listen to the bell tolling the time of day or to hear it from afar when you were on your way back to the village.
This window in the small house in Italy, that has sheltered different generations of my family for centuries, is my favourite. It is the tiniest and gives a view out over the village of Fossa like peering from a cubby house. I also love that it shows how thick the stone walls are.
Zoë Boccabella 