San Pietro Infine, centerpoint of an epic battle: shadows of war

San Pietro Infine is a tiny medieval village in Southern Italy, almost halfway between Rome and Naples.

It is uninhabited and completely in ruins.

If you’re interested in history, you probably know what Cassino means in WWII.

But does San Pietro Infine tell you anything?

Probably not, even if it lies few kilometers south of Cassino.

Because of its position, on the slopes of Monte Sambucaro,  it was the centerpoint of an epic battle between the American V Army, and the German 29th Panzer Grenadier Division.

Americans were on their way to Rome and Northern Italy.

Germans had set their stronghold few kilometers north of San Pietro Infine, along what was called the Gustav Line.

San Pietro was an important outpost: almost inaccessible, with good view over the valley and the main road.

Germans could patrol every possible access point for the enemies coming from South-East.

And the allied troops had to destroy that stronghold built on a ravine, where all the houses were a good shelter for guns and snipers, to have a free passage towards Cassino (and this is another sad story…) and Rome.

The battle for San Pietro lasted almost two weeks, and at the end of it the Germans were defeated, the village was completely destroyed by earth and air bombing.

As a side effect,  the population was decimated.

Most part of the inhabitants had refused to leave the village (and where could they go?) and had sought shelter in natural caves that are at one side of the village.

But bombs make no difference and they destroy even natural caverns. So at the end of the battle more than 130 civilians had been killed, over a population of almost 1.500.

John Huston, the great film director, during the war served in the Army with the rank of Captain.  His main duty was produce films for the Army Signal Corps. He made a documentary about the battle, a beautiful work that was censored by the Army because it pointed out on some strategic mistakes and failures of intelligence that originated almost 1.200 casualties among the Allied forces.

If you’re interested you can watch it here:  https://archive.org/details/battle_of_san_pietro

Today, San Pietro Infine is a ghost town.

After the war, the village has been rebuilt few kilometres away.

But the abandoned and destroyed houses can be visited and are not far away from the motorway exit. An interesting detour for history lovers travelling between Roma and Naples!

If you stand in what was San Pietro’s main square, you easily understand the strategic importance of the village during WWII.  From here you can see great part of the valley below, the main road, some minor valleys towards South.

The old destroyed houses have been left untouched by human hands. Only vegetation has found its way through the old stones.

Walking through the alleys with nobody around and in total silence is a surreal experience, like traveling in time.

One could think that snipers are still hiding among the ruins and can imagine to hear the battle’s thunder.

You can easily recognize the whole urban structure among wild vegetation: alleys, little squares, corners.

I walked through an archway were once was the tavern, and it is the only artifact  that still stands almost untouched by bombs.

One can walk through the archway and on the other side there is “Casa Compagnone”.

The Compagnone family moved to the United States soon after the battle but they still have San Pietro Infine in their memories.

The site is not completely abandoned, some shepherds still wander mostly through the upper part of the village, and only few curious animals roam through the ruins.

On the highest point of the village there is a church.

Its ruins still dominate the whole scene from above and the imagination goes to different scenes of popular faith and war.

At the base of the village, not far from the main square, you can even visit the caves were the populations lived during the battle.

The ceiling is so low that, once stepped inside, one can barely stand.

Think how miserable should be the population’s living conditions during the battle: hundreds of women, elders and children gathered together for weeks in darkness and fear of bombing, with no fresh air, no water, no food, no facilities, and without knowing what was happening outside.

I found the visit to San Pietro Infine very instructive about the horrors or wars.

While wandering in those empty cobbled lanes my mind went to people who are right now suffering what the inhabitants of San Pietro suffered.

Think of people in Syria or in eastern Ukraine right now, think of former Yugoslavia few decades ago.

Ruined villages like San Pietro Infine are scattered on planet Earth, natural monuments to the atrocity of every war.

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Safranbolu: Silk Road and tradition in Northern Turkey

Sip a cup of salep under a vine; the sun sparkles through the green leaves and the purple grapes. Around you are mosques and Ottoman houses, three caravanserais and the Arasta bazaar,   which once housed all the cobblers of the town and is now a gem of wood and peace, surrounded by vines, with a great bar that serves traditional Turkish coffee.

In Safranbolu the Silk Road was one step from its longed Mediterranean end and I can imagine how the caravans would welcome this green and shady valley after the infinite vastness of the Anatolian steppe plateau.

Safranbolu qualifies as a UNESCO World Heritage sight and is an ideal destination for photographers looking for characteristic views: its traditional wooden and stone Ottoman houses are clotted around some hills. From the top of these hills you can enjoy a superb view: the city, minarets,  domes and the surrounding mountains .

There is so much silence in Safranbolu, broken by the recurring calls to pray of the muezzins. But if you visit it during  Ramadan, then you should know that traditions are well respected here; so, every Ramadan’s night, few hours before dawn you’ll hear the sound and rhythm of a tambourine who goes through  the streets of the town to wake up and call the faithful to their last meal before the ritual fasting, that begins at sunrise. If  you are able to go on sleeping, that won’t get long, since at sunrise the muezzin’s chant will wake you up.  At that point, just get up and head to the scenic spots identified the day before, to photograph landscapes with the best possible light.

In the central hours of the day the light is often very raw, made even tougher by the angles determined by the stone houses, the deep shadows cast by the overhanging roofs and tents of the shops in the market . As in the first and last hours of the day as well as landscapes you can photograph details and textures, when the sun is high it will be better to focus on images with a strong graphic impact, high contrast; don’t be afraid of taking advantage of a full backlight to draw a fascinating silhouette.

To walk through the narrow cobbled streets of this town is a real pleasure: there are few tourists, there is no crowd, and you have the opportunity to photograph with ease. There are markets, the walls of the caravanserai in the center of the old urban core (today converted in a 5-stars hotel but still worth a visit), and a deep and narrow canyon where blacksmiths work all the day and sell theit products.

If you can afford to spend a dozen Euros, do take a taxi to Yörük Köyü, a nearby village, almost completely uninhabited, which is magically preserved in a time warp. The name means “Village of Nomads” and its inhabitants were once famous for their ability to make bread. In Istanbul the best bakers are former inhabitants of  Yörük Köyü, emigrated to the big city.

The village is charmingly under-restored: there are ancient cream-plastered Ottoman houses dating back to the sixteenth century, quiet corners, the square with the minaret and the mosque. All is quiet and almost deserted.

Today in Yörük Köyü live were very few people (officially 144). All the young men are away, mostly elderly, women and children remain here. You meet them along the unpaved roads of the village, busy with their agricultural work, or simply lounging in the cool of the shadow cast by the mosque.

This is a charming remote place where you can find peace, quietness and beautiful houses often in a poor state of preservation: not yet a ghost town , but something very close to it .

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Ikateq, population: one

Roughly diamond-shaped, Angmassalik island, off the coast of Eastern Greenland, is 40 km long and 30 km. wide; it ‘s a mountainous island of granite polished by ice, with many small valleys modelled by the glacial erosion. Only the tops of the mountains are often sharp; obviously in the past they were Nunataq: this Inuit term refers to a mountain peak that rises from the ice sheet. And even to an evil person.

The sea that separates Angmassalik island from the mainland creeps in form of fjords of various size; by sailing with a small boat, it takes a whole day to make the tour of the island: first  you venture to the edges of the Polar Stream, then in the Sermilik fjord, a sort of river of iceberg, and then, through iceberg free fjords until you  get back to Tasiilaq.

It’s cold. On the sea there is a constant chill wind, the water has a temperature close to zero Celsius and iceberg are everywhere. You need warm and windproof clothes to avoid frostbite. And, above all, it is essential not to splash in the water!

We are at  the mouth of the Sermilik: a fjord over a hundred miles long with an average width of about ten kilometers that receives ice from 12 glaciers of the area. While you get closer to the bottom the fjord gets narrower and the water is full of iceberg of every size.  But this will happen later. We are just at the mouth of the fjord and between the mist we see a wooden dock. We are in Ikateq!

Ikateq’s official population is: one.

But we can’t see anybody walking the path carved in the granite, through the wooden houses, the church, the school and the deposits.

Ikateaq is actually a ghost town, completely uninhabited.

In the years of its greatest development Ikateq’s population rose up to 70, not bad for the almost inhabited Greenland (total population 56.000, less than the town where I live, with a density of 0,026 per sq. km); they were mostly hunters, sometimes with their families.

When hunting was largely banned and regulated by the Danish government, they lost every source of livelihood and moved to Tasiilaq, in search of state subsidies and cheap alcohol. In Ikateq remained only women and the elderlies, then gradually the women reached their men in Tasiilaq and only the elderlies remained, who slowly died.

The last one passed over in 2005 and since then the village is uninhabited even though the official  population is still 1. Probably  the last resident has’nt found a way to opt out from the population registers.

We climb the hill on top of which there are a few wooden buildings, a warehouse, a large structure for drying fish and a church with a classroom. Everything looks as if the town is still inhabited: in the church the organ still has music sheets on the lectern; in the classroom there are books on the table, chalk close to the  blackboard ; an old fashioned map with shapes and names of countries that no more exist hangs from the wall.

The houses around have windows with clean glasses: you can look inside and see the the decor, coats on the hangers, dishes, lamps. Outside there are wooden sleds and kennels for dogs, storage sheds for tools and spare parts for boats.

But nobody is around.

As if time had crystallized because of the cold, as if  people were all suddenly gone and the town hadn’t  gone through a long period of decay;  or as if someone comes to clean every week. Luckily during the arctic summer the is no night, because I would have been afraid of the ghosts that surely wander through these houses!

But there is no mystery of course:  in winter, when the inland waters freeze you can get here with sleds, and Ikateq is still used as an outpost and a shelter by the hunters who come from other villages of the district.

The harsh climate, the lack of dust and the absolute lack of damage caused by other people help to keep the appearance of a town  whose inhabitants are all gone somewhere for an urgent task, and will come back later.

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Who am I?

I am a free lance outdoor photographer based in Avellino, Campania, in Southern Italy, not far from Naples, Amalfi Coast, Pompeii and Herculaneum.

My photos have been published on the Italian issue of Digital Camera Magazine, on the Italian travel magazine Viaggi del Sole, on the Italian issue of GEO Magazine.

One of my travel reportages, about the Hadza tribe of Tanzania was performed in November 2010 in a collective exhibition titled Africa yesterday and today held by the “Chatwin Prize” in Genova.

 My main activity is based on travel reportages and landscape photos, and this has brought me to know in depth the most beautiful corners of the area where I live.

 

With the time I started to ask myself why shouldn’t I share with other photographers the beauties I was witnessing, being them the most famous (think of Amalfi Coast, Capri, Ischia) or the less known.

This is why I decided to offer photo tours and photo walks in distinctive sites located in the area where I live and around.

Being a landscape photographer my main goal is to express into an image the beauty of the places and the emotions I felt while clicking. And I would like to address the participants to my  photo tours and photo walks to capture in their images shot while with me what they feel rather than what they see. 

A postcard can be bought at every newsstand, an image with an emotion has a louder voice and a distinctive character.

Some of the best known sites I can get you to are:

Amalfi Coast (Amalfi, Ravello, Positano, some hidden gems scattered along it and less known).

Upon agreement I can also be with you along some of the most scenic walking path of the area, like: Sentiero degli dei (God’s path) that leads to Positano and offers fantastic views of the rugged coastline and – far away – the island of Capri, or Valle delle Ferriere: a very scenic path among rare plants, waterfalls and old paper mills

 Pompeii and Herculaneum

Paestum, majestic Greek temples scattered in a vast plain, among oint trees, between the sea and the mountains.

Caserta’s Royal Palace and Caserta Vecchia, a masterpiece of the Baroque with huge, impressive gardens and an ancient town with a gorgeous view

Procida, tiny, colourful, fascinating island in the gulf of Naples

Alberobello and Trulli, the whitewashed cone-shaped distintive buildings typical of that area

The “white towns” in Apulia (Ostuni, Cisternino, Martina Franca, Locorotondo)

Matera and “Sassi”

But if you like to be off the beaten path, I can suggest different itineraries where you can find less crowd, more silence and inspiration.

For example, the Wine Road in Irpinia:  among gentle hills and green landscapes (or ochre or yellow, it depends on the season) we will visit vineyards and wine cellars where the tasteful and well known Taurasi  is produced along with the more gentle white Greco di Tufo.

 

Or we can pay a visit to one of the many ghost towns located in this area: fascinating old villages, abandoned and partly destroyed but full of charm and photographic possibilities.

We can also have a tour along and old railroad, built in the XIX century and now abandoned: majestic iron bridges, old stations, rusty rails, beautiful landscapes and interesting villages.

 

There are many other possibilities, and it’s also possible to tailor a program on your needs and interests.

A photo walk is not less than two hours up to one whole day, while photo tours are usually one weekend long.

You’ll have the assistance of an experienced photographer who will also lead you to the best photographic spots. Upon request and arrangement I can offer pick up and transport service, accommodation and meals.

Based on my experience, the best time for this tours are springtime and early autumn, when temperatures are mild and the big crowd is away, but the tours are available all year long.

If you need any other info please don’t hesitate to contact me at

info@photosontheroad.eu.