Follow
Poor Poggioreale, birthplace of my grandparents. Now the old site is a place of ruins. The new site I understand is losing its population and may soon be as underpopulated as the old town. Sad.
Poggioreale, Sicily
I come from a place that will never again be, on the largest isle in the Mediterranean Sea. It was my grandparents’ home in Sicily. Without this place there would be no me.
In January of nineteen hundred and sixty-eight Poggioreale town met its dreadful fate. In the Valle del Belice an earthquake quaked. Hundreds then asleep there never awaked.
The ancient town turned into a ruin of rubble, Grieving survivors were now in great trouble. They could not salvage the site of the old; nearby they rebuilt in a post-modern mold.
The old town’s remains can be visited today. Poggioreale Nuova is but a few miles away. The original site can be seen from the new. Now It’s a ghost town, eerie, forlorn and askew. Like Sicily itself with its long ancient history, ever rebuilding beside graves of mystery.
Felix Gagliano, December 2018