Walking the Streets

As we walk the narrow streets of Civita we see evidence of its continuous habitation. The majority of the buildings are houses, largely unchanged since the Middle Ages, that reflect close ties to the agriculture of the nearby valley. Ground level rooms adjoining the street were usually stables for animals. Many ground level doorways lead down to subterranean wine cellars. These spaces carved out of the soft tufo of the hill, centuries if not millennia ago, have served ever since for the making of wine by traditional methods. The local people take this for granted, and visitors only see a few cellars that are now open to the public. Most people are unaware of the extensive nature of the invisible, subterranean city of Civita.

Many houses have an exterior stone stairway that leads to a second-level entry and the main living areas of the house. In some cases a third level is used for bedrooms (and in earlier times was used for the storage of fodder for the animals). The steps and landings of these exterior stairs provided a place to hang the laundry and to sit while doing domestic chores in the company of neighbors. Carefully tended flower pots now line house stairs and landings. Flowers also sit on gray stone basaltina window sills or hang from steel rings set into the warm brown tufo walls of houses. Windows open inward and people lean out to converse with friends, or just to watch what is going on in the street. Now that many of the houses have become vacation homes, social activity in public spaces has decreased. Some stairs remain empty with newly-erected steel gates at their base to discourage the increasing numbers of tourists from climbing the stairs of what they perceive to be an abandoned building.

Walking towards the eastern end of Civita, the main street comes closer to the face of the cliff. The houses that once lined the south side of the street have long since vanished and passersby are greeted by low garden walls that retrace the line of the earlier house fronts. From the public street there are only glimpses through gates into several private gardens.

Civita is designated a national cultural resource by the Italian government and was recently placed on the World Monuments Fund watch list. The idea is to preserve the overall exterior image of a medieval hill town but this does not preclude some necessary modernization. A close inspection of the stone walls of the houses of Civita reveals traces not only of centuries past but also of much more recent interventions. Electric and telephone wires and television antenna cables sneak along vine-covered walls. Metal grilles filling three-inch round holes bored through the stone walls to vent new gas-fired central heating systems can be seen. Most houses have small metal boxes at the base of the wall enclosing the gas, water and electric meters. Copper gutters and downspouts have replaced the traditional clay pipes once used to collect rain water into cisterns. Internet service is available through micro-relay dishes.

For over two thousand years families living in Civita were mostly subsistence farmers, commuting daily to their fields in the valley below. Things began to change in the mid 20th century, as younger people began to take jobs in nearby towns or even move away to other parts of Italy. But by the 1990's there began to be employment opportunities in Civita due to increasing tourism.

The population of Civita has stopped declining, and the availability of natural gas for central heating has persuaded more people to live here year round. A handful of newcomers have moved to Civita to live year-round, and many others spend weekends and summer vacations here. The economic base of the town has inevitably changed from the traditional self-sufficient farming , and now both newcomers and natives live different types of lives with an increasing emphasis on comfort and convenience.