Even the moon, white and bright, has its dark side, singing the Pink Floyd in their famous song. Thus, the Valle d’Itria, which today is known as a fairytale place and among the most visited tourist destinations in the Puglia region, in the past or a recent past had a very different image.
Brigandage and deportation: the other face of Valle d’Itria
The almost uncontaminated nature that makes these areas a corner of paradise between trulli and vineyards remains intact. But as we said, it has not always been so. In fact, the valley has been a transit site between the two seas, inhabited since ancient times and even contended. And it had a “dark side” especially since the second half of the nineteenth century, after the unification of Italy, when the country’s campaigns did not escape the phenomenon of the Brigandage which affected the entire South of Italy.
At that time there were many gangs of brigands who were formed by runners in the arm, escaped capture and shooting, soldiers and officers of the dissolved Bourbon army, former Garibaldi followers, shepherds and peasant farmers, who spadroned here: by the brigand priest Ciro Annicchiarico founder of “decisive sect” and promoter of the “Salento Republic” at Carmine Crocco who found shelter in Bosco of Pianelle in Martina Franca.
Among the farms and the countryside of Putignano, Castellana, Alberobello, Noci, Locorotondo, Turi, Conversano, Gioia del Colle, Martina Franca, Mottola, Monopoli and Fasano sowed the terror Nicola Spinosa, known as Scannacornacchia’s nickname. At the border of the territory between Martina Franca and Mottola, the forests of San Basilio hosted between 1861 and 1863 some of the most bloody exponents of the postunit brigandage such as Cosimo Mazzeo of San Marzano called Pizzichicchio, Rocco Chirichigno of Montescaglioso alias Coppolone and Sergente Romano.
These bands began their raids in the countryside and favored initially by the complicity of shepherds and farmers were supplying food, weapons and horses in the rich farms of the area. But later, those who lived on their hard work began to not bend over to the raids of the brigands.
So the masseries that were once fortified to resist the attacks of pirates from the sea began to become increasingly important aggregation sites to defend themselves from the assaults of these often crumbling and unmanned groups.
But who were the much-feared brigands? There were so many figures: there were priests who repudiated the church for the love of a woman and young sergeants who mobilized masses of soldiers to venture.
In order to better understand the phenomenon of brigandage, the Night of the Brigands is organized each year, a show by the Alberobello Association of Sylva Tour and Didactics, focused on the events related to the postunitary phenomenon in the territory of the Murgia dei Trulli.
Costume scenes are set in the adjacent woods of the former Gigante Foundation, better known as Casa Rossa, and represent the events that really happened in a still low-profile period. Because what is reported in the books about the Unity of Italy, brigandage and the southern question is only a small part.
And it’s no coincidence that these events are set around a place that also boasts a very singular story. This is a masseria built in 1887 called “Tree of the Cross” which was expropriated to Donna Teresa Spinelli, Countess of Conversano, was purchased by the priest Don Francesco Gigante from Alberobello who here wanted to set up the “F. Gigante” Agrarian School.
The imposing building, which still falls on all the surrounding territory at the crossroads of the three provinces of Bari, Brindisi and Taranto, is a large two-storey red Pompeian building with almost 50 rooms of different width and large basements that hosted the Agrarian Institute until the outbreak of World War II. Since then it has been used as a Concentration Camp for interns and confinements: the “Casa Rossa” started operating on June 28, 1940 and remains active with other events until its definitive closure in November 1949.
It was one of the longest internship camps that saw about five thousand people spend in a decade. In the early years alternating between the walls of the complex, about 200 internatied by British, German Jews fleeing from the Reich, Italian Jews, ex-Poles, Anarchist and anti-Fascist stateless persons, and some common delinquent. Initially foreign Jews were guests, ie they were there with a tourist visa to complete the practice and move to America, then, following the entry into the war of Italy, arrived hundreds and hundreds of deportees destined to Auschwitz and the other camps of extermination.
At the end of the war there were imprisoned ex-fascists and men who had been stained with war crimes pending trial. Between 1947 and 1949, the third season for the Casa Rossa begins. This is the period of the Cold War and many women former collaborators from all over Europe are locked up with their children. These include whole family groups of displaced persons from all over Europe: Germans, Muslim Albanians, Austrians, Yugoslavs, Russian Orthodox non-Bolshevik, Baltic and deserters.
On December 5, 2007, the Regional Directorate for Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Apulia declared the Casa Rossa of good historical-artistic interest. It seemed destined to become a cultural container and to be transformed into a Memorial Museum of the Shoah in the Mezzogiorno. But unfortunately this is not the case and today only the ancient stables of the Gigante Foundation have been restored becoming part of a hotel structure.
The rest is in complete abandonment, at the mercy of vandals who have already removed stone bases, interior fixtures, trulli’s chianche, paintings and sacred furniture from the chapel and devastated the archives. Due to rainwater infiltration, the frescoes and the false mosaic above the altar of the chapel, made in 1948 during his internment by the Lithuanian descent Viktor Tschernon, are in ruins.
Looking at the Casa we go away with a thrill that runs along our backs. This is the suggestion that the hiss of wind between the branches of the trees seems to carry with us voices, shouts and laments.