Calcata Vecchia, a beautiful medieval town that was built on cliffs

@ElentirENG ES 12·17·2023 · 23:23 0

Italy is a spectacular country that preserves beautiful towns of medieval origin. One of the most beautiful is about 50 km north of Rome.

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Located in the region of Lazio, the town of Calcata Vecchia is known worldwide because it was built on cliffs, but there was a time when this characteristic condemned the town to abandonment, since in 1930 the authorities considered that the volcanic rock on which the medieval center of the town stood was at risk of collapsing, so its houses were abandoned.

Calcata Vecchia had had a long history, so long that its events sometimes enter the realm of legend. One of the best-known legends of Falcata is about a German landskeleton from the army of Emperor Charles V, who after the Sack of Rome in 1527 would have been captured by the residents of this town, carrying with him an alleged relic. of Christ that would have been discovered three decades later in his cell. Three centuries later, the possible falsity of that relic brought some problems to the town, which was settled in 1900 with a penalty of excommunication for anyone who mentioned or worshiped that relic. The relic was stolen in 1983, and nothing more has been heard of it since.

After the abandonment of Calcata Vecchia already in the 20th century, the medieval town was abandoned for many years. Finally, at the end of the 1960s, a slow resurgence of this town began through the illegal occupation of its old houses by artists and hippies, ignoring the danger of the cliffs collapsing.

Calcata Vecchia ended up becoming the home of a hundred hippies and bohemians, who ended up buying the houses from their original owners (who had moved to the new part of Calcata, known as Calcata Nuova). The new inhabitants of Calcata Vecchia repaired the old medieval town and set up hospitality and art businesses there.

Finally, the Italian government ended up revoking the demolition sentence that had been imposed on the medieval town since the 1930s, with which Calcata Vecchia has become a great tourist attraction, as well as one of the best preserved medieval towns in Italy. Nowadays, as in the past, it is only possible to access the interior of this spectacular town from a single arch-shaped door, facing east.

If you want to know more about Calcata Vecchia and its peculiar inhabitants, a year ago Un reporter in valigia published this interesting video showing the interior of the medieval town and interviewing some of its inhabitants (the video is in Italian, you can activate the automatic subtitles in English in the bottom bar of the player):

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Main photo: Italia.it.