entry
Sept 2014
Roccamandolfi, the Matese massif, Molise
For Whom the Bell
Tolls
Roccamandolfi
My
friends from Napoli Underground (NUg) seem to be
doing a lot of poking around above ground these
days. I suppose they can always claim that the
mountain treks they take into the rugged areas in
south-central Italy are to search out the many karst caves,
the most notable features of which are stalagmites
and stalactites, so in a way they really are
prowling around “underground.” Whatever the case,
the mountains about 80 km (50 miles) north of
Naples and inland, smack in the middle of the
peninsula, are called the Matese mountains or
massif; they are part of the central-southern
Apennines, the “backbone of Italy."
Administratively, the Matese mountains are in the
Molise region, the next region to the north of
Campania. It's a pleasant drive from Naples.As Fulvio Salvi of NUg writes in his recent account of the trip on their website: “The basic idea was to follow a part of the trail that leads from Roccamandolfi (image, right) to Campitello Matese by way of the Tibetan bridge and make a stop at the ruins of the Longobard castle.”
Roccamandolfi is a town in the Matese mountains about 15 km (9 miles) southeast of Isernia. It sits at 850 meters (c.2600 feet) above sea level and is quite near the highest point (2050 meters/6150 feet) of the massif, Mt. Miletto. The town has a population of just over one thousand, down from about 3500 in the year 1900, before the great waves of emigration struck many parts of Italy. It is about 5 km (3 miles), as the crow flies, from Roccamandolfi to Campitello Matese, the path my friends intended to follow. In these hills, the crows have it easy.
To explain
the title of this entry. In 2007, the Molise
region presented a memorial bell (image, left)
(fused in the Pontifical
Marinelli foundry in nearby Agnone) to
the town of Monongah in the U.S. state of W.
Virginia for the commemoration of the worst mining
disaster in U.S. history a century earlier. It
occurred on December 6, 1907 in Monongah at the
Fairmont Coal Company. No one seems to know the
exact death toll, but the official count
(certainly too low) was 362. The explosion and
fire created 250 widows and 1000 orphans. Molise
sent the bell because 87 of the dead were from
this very area in Molise, near Roccamandolfi. The
emigration numbers break your heart. In 1900, more
than 3,000 inhabitants; then the sudden drop as
thousands go abroad to seek a better life, many as
coal miners. Today the bell sits in the Monongah
town square. It tolls for them, and I do not mean
that in any flippant or disrespectful sense. I was
moved to include this information because I set
out to write something maybe a bit light-hearted
and found a moving human interest story. Now I
know it and so do you. All of the towns in the
hills of southern Italy have their own wrenching
stories of the Italian
diaspora.
Indeed, my
friends set off from Roccamandolfi towards
Campitello Matese and found both the Tibetan
bridge as well as the ruins of the Longobard
castle (image, right). They then got daring and
hiked around Monte Crivare along part of the north
slope in order to get down to a stream that is a
tributary of the Callora river. At that point they
got common sense and turned back. They had got
down to the riverbed and started running into deep
pools that they could not ford with their
equipment. They were, indeed, now in the Callora
River Nature Preserve, where the going really can
get rough —steep walls, deep water, etc. 
In ancient times, these hills were home
to Samnites,
mortal enemies of the Romans. The Samnites
eventually lost that battle (as did every other
people on the Italian peninsula!). The most
significant archaeological site after the end of
the Roman period is the Longobard castle named during that period
(end of the 800s) for one Maginulfo, (a Longobard
name if ever there was one!). The castle and
domain went through typical transitions from
Lombards to Normans and into the long feudal
history of southern Italy and finally into the
more modern Bourbon
history of the south. More recently:
Roccamandolfi is only about 55 km (35 miles) from
the waters of the Tyrrhenian sea (at Gaeta) and in
the hills near Monte Cassino and near the infamous
Liri Valley (called “Death Valley” by the Allies
in WWII), the main Allied invasion route towards
Rome. The town was also near the Gustav Line, one
of the deadly German
defensive lines strung across Italy.
The towns in the area suffered bombardments and
visitations from soldiers of various nations as
the war moved past them in late '43 and early '44.The other target, the Tibetan bridge (image, above), is new and made of steel and looks solid. It is the latest attempt to add some accessibility to the area, connecting, as it does, the mountain slopes on either side of the Callora river in the valley The area is almost deserted even at the height of the tourist season. There are now a few hotels and even chair and ski-lifts; it does snow up there and sometimes quite considerably, but the summers also enjoy very warm temperatures.
photos: the bell photo is uncredited; all other photos from Napoli Underground.
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