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Updated: May 9, 2025
I will attack it by way of Rossano, and thence wander, past Longobucco, across the whole region. It may be well, after all, to come again into contact with streams and woodlands, after this drenching of classical associations and formal civic life! Near me stands a shore-battery which used to be called "Batteria Chianca."
This unhappy village was sacked and burnt, suffering all the horrors inseparable from a capture by assault." Two hundred dead were found in the streets. Perhaps they were not within fifty miles of the place. Be that as it may, they were captured later on by their own compatriots, after the French had waited a month at Longobucco.
The whole country is full of these inventions of litterati which date, for the most part, from the enthusiastic but undisciplined Cinque-Cento. The minute geographical triangle comprised between Cosenza, Longobucco and San Demetrio which I was now traversing is one of the least known corners of Italy, and full of dim Hellenic memories.
It is an easy march of eight hours or less, through pleasing scenery and by a good track, from Longobucco to San Giovanni in Fiore, the capital of the Sila. The path leaves Longobucco at the rear of the town and, climbing upward, enters a valley which it follows to its head.
At this season, thanks to its elevation of 1050 metres, the temperature is all that could be desired, and the hotel, such as it is, compares favourably indeed with the den at Longobucco. Instantly I felt at home among these good people, who recognized me, and welcomed me with the cordiality of old friends. "Well," they asked, "and have you found it at last?"
At the summit the vegetation changes once more, and you find yourself among magnificent stretches of pines that continue as far as the governmental domain of Galoppano, a forestal station, two hours' walk from Longobucco. In youth, especially where the soil is deep, it shoots up prim and demure as a Nuremberg toy; but in old age grows monstrous.
Writing from Longobucco in 1808 during a brigand-hunt, Duret de Tavel says: "The high wooded mountains which surround this horrible place spread over it a sombre and savage tint which saddens the imagination. This borough contains a hideous population of three thousand souls, composed of nail-makers, of blacksmiths and charcoal-burners.
What a galaxy of brigand legends would have clustered round my memory! Evening was closing in, and I had traversed the stream so often and stumbled so long amid this chaos of roaring waters and weirdly-tinted rocks, that I began to wonder whether the existence of Longobucco was not a myth.
Everywhere in these stiller regions was the sound of running waters, and I soon discerned that Longobucco is an improvement on the usual site affected by Calabrian hill-towns the Y-shaped enclosure, namely, at the junction of two rivers inasmuch as it has contrived to perch itself on a lofty platform protected by no less than three streams that rush impetuously under its walls: the Trionto and two of its affluents.
The industrious H. W. Schulz has unearthed a Royal rescript of 1274 charging a certain goldsmith Johannes of Longobucco with researches into the metal and salt resources of the whole kingdom of Naples.
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