For 8 years, I spent a good portion of my summer vacations in a part of Italy not commonly visited by most tourists. Far from the vineyards of Tuscany or the city dwellings of Rome and Naples or the island region of Sicily is , the agricultural heart of Italy. Molise is the forgotten part of Italy, and if any tourist guides devote any attention to the region, it is usually in the form of two pages at most. Even then, these guides will describe the area as forgettable with maybe the exception of its beautiful beaches and the . I think they are wrong.
Molise occupies an area formerly known as Samnium, home to the ancient Samnites, who settled in the region starging around 600 BC and lasting until 290 BC when the Roman Empire conquered Samnium in the Third Samnite war. Many people you meet in ancient villages throughout Molise will claim to be direct descendants of families that have lived in the region for over 1,500 years and longer.
is a small town in the hills overlooking the Adriatic Sea that serves as an example of the hundreds of small towns that dot the landscape of Molise. This is a photo essay I took in the summer of 2004 of Bonefro.
At the heart of every village in Italy is the piazza, a place for people to hang out and talk with friends about anything from politics and the news of the day to the gossip of local neighbors. And most often the people that hang out in the piazza are men, usually retired or on break from their work in the fields. The women are usually not seen very often, as they are usually at home taking care of the family cooking.
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