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Tuscany, Italy 🇮🇹

Ghost sculptures in the Castle of Vezio in Lake Como, Italy.

Val di Funes, Italy *by eberhard

Florence *by Ahmed

Alpe di Siusi, Italy

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Back of Statue, Livorno, Italy, Photo by Robert Frank, 1961

muoio malissimo

What a funny story...

okay context for the non-italians. long story short: it's pretty much impossible from an engineering perspective. there are very strong and swirly currents that make it not feasible to just build a bridge where the coasts are the closest - it would have to be built in a spot where the distance between the coasts is wider, a little too much for a bridge possibly, but also, like, outside of the cities, which means it would still be quicker for people to step on the ferry than drive all the way to the bridge. the ferry is quick, cheap, also they've introduced sustainable non-polluting boats, so, literally no one in either sicily or calabria wants a useless bridge, even if it could be built safely.

on top of that... it's a seismic area. you really don't want to make engineering experiments there.

governments have tried to figure out a way to build that bridge at least from the 60s, afaik, but engineers have just come to the conclusion that nope.

also: people in sicily and calabria have reason to believe that if a project like that gets given the green light, it will end up fattening the pockets of corrupted politicians and mafia groups.

pretty straightforward right? yeah... NOPE!

the italian right has been waving the proposal of building that bridge for decades. every once in a while, when you think you're free, BAM the right-wing politician genius of the moment comes up with the law proposal to build the bridge. it used to be berlusconi, now berlusconi is dead, recently it's been salvini. they propose to build the bridge, the left says "what the fuck", and the right goes see!! the left doesn't want progress and development for the country!! they want the country to languish and die!!

(in the meanwhile taxpayers' euros go into paying commissions that need to figure out how to build the bridge, ignoring that there's been a billion commissions over almost a century that have all come to the conclusion that nope.)

(also remember what i said about corrupted politicians and mafia groups? well try to guess the reason it's the right-wing parties that keep insisting on building this fucking bridge.)

it's become a total national joke. mention the bridge on the strait to an italian, they'll laugh as they go through the 5 stages of italian political grief.

by Fratelli Alinari, 1889

Venezia, Italy

Centuripe, province in Enna, Sicily, Italy

August 28, 2016 - Firenze

Runkelstein Castle, Territory of Ritten, South Tyrol, Italy

Padua, Italy (by Stefano Segato)

Milan, Italy

Today October 9th 2023 marks 60 years from the Vajont tragedy. On this same day in 1963 (at around 10PM) a landslide moved down from the mount Toc, cause of the continuos rains of the previous days, and fell into the artificial dam between Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. An enormous wave of water moved over the dam (that crumbled down) and covered a village, taking a way around 2000 people's lives.

More infos and old newspapers here:

Tonight at 9:15 PM (GMT+2) on Mediaset Focus (click on "tutte le dirette") there will be a special about this tragedy. You'll need an Italian vpn to watch it.

This happened in my region! Often classified as a "natural disaster", this is actually the worst man-made disaster to ever have happened on Italian soil. The entire side of the mountain fell into the artificial lake because of human greed and hubris, and two thousand people died who could still be alive today (many of them were children).

The company working on the dam (one of the tallest in the world, still), Sade, continued to disregard warnings by the local population that landslides and signs of seismic activity had begun happening since they started cutting into the sides of the mountains; they, of course, chose profits over human lives. The villagers kept asking if it was safe: on the night of the disaster, they were once again told they had nothing to worry about and to remain at home, despite knowing something terrible might happen soon.

After the two villages hit by the megatsunami (Longarone wiped off the map, Erto semi-destroyed), authorities worked hard to forcefully relocate survivors: not only were they never compensated or officially apologized to, but authorities buried the story and tried to erase what happened entirely (many snuck back into their houses and lived there without water or electricity for years, refusing to leave). Only young journalist Tina Merlin attemped to tell the truth (and was sued by Sade for it - she won the case, of course, but her reputation remained bismirched for years).

The villages were rebuilt a little further up the mountain in a safer place. Because the dam held, and is still there, it has changed not only the topography but the weather cycles of the place forever: the ghost village of old Erto and the surrounding villages are perpetually sunk in fog, a fog so thick sometimes that it covers up the moon.

That's a picture I took there last year: up on the right, the new village; down center, where the fog is thicker, where the old village used to be.