At the foot of the Monte Calvario, in the southern tip of Calabria, rises a rocky formation that seems to have stepped out of an ancient myth: five fingers of rock protruding from the elevation as if a giant hand had emerged to the surface.
Clinging to this structure is Pentedattilo (Italy), an abandoned village that has risen from oblivion to reveal all its secrets and its beauty.
The ghost town atop the devil’s hand
A striking Calabrian relief with unusually shaped features is the reason behind the name of Pentedattilo, a toponym of Greek origin that alludes to the existence of “five fingers” of rock that protrude as knobs from this southern Italian formation.
Upon those five fingers stands a population tenacious about this structure, as if defying the laws of nature embodied in gravity. And the result could hardly be more poetic and surprising, with a town perched on a kind of colossal stone hand that seems to support it.
Pentedattilo traces its origins back many centuries to what is now the Coast of Jasmine in the province of Reggio di Calabria. Belonging to the municipality of Melito di Porto Salvo, it is a place steeped in tragedy, legend, and rebirth in equal measure.
The history of Pentedattilo is marked by a tragedy that, over time, has taken on the hues of legend. And it was the scene of what is known today as “the Alberti massacre,” a crime of passion that pitted two noble families living in Pentedattilo against each other.
Everything began when Bernardino Abenavoli asked for Antonietta Alberti’s hand but her father rejected the proposal, delivering his daughter in marriage to the son of the Viceroy of Naples. Humiliated and consumed by jealousy, he vowed revenge.
On Easter night, Abenavoli stormed the castle of Pentedattilo at the head of a group of sicarios provoking a brutal massacre, killing all members of the Alberti family except Antonietta, whom he forced to marry him, and her fiancé, who was taken as a hostage.
After the events, the Viceroy of Naples sent a military expedition that captured the perpetrators, although Bernardino Abenavoli managed to escape.
