The Rediscovered Stories of Sant'Angelo in Lizzola

It is not difficult to tell about Sant'Angelo in Lizzola because the town is lively, rich in history, inhabited by welcoming people proud of their roots, full of small and large stories that still echo between old and new streets, where generations meet every day and have places and opportunities for exchange.

It is difficult to do it in such a way as to be able to make it clear how here the big stories intertwine with the small stories, to make the feeling very lively in the country that the historical events and the actions of the great characters are part of everyone's story, reworked and therefore kept in one's memory in an unofficial but rather almost personal way. 

There is therefore in Sant'Angelo a collective memory made up of fragments, sometimes translated in an ironic and other nostalgic way, which is still very much alive but could risk being lost. There are several texts - historical, documentary or more popular - but the walkscape intends to mend that fragmented plot and lead the curious to look at the places in the country through the eyes of the protagonists, to underline how the life of the country has always been characterized by men of genius but even by pranksters, scholars and hard workers but also by eccentric characters, by men of power but also by rebels, in the distant past as well as in recent times.

And it was precisely on this line that Don Giovanni Gabucci, Don Gvan, who carried out an enormous archiving work in the parish of the collegiate church of San Michele up until the Second World War, had already created a real itinerary through the town, which described places of historical and artistic interest but also shops and refreshment areas. 

The walkscape "The rediscovered stories" has changed the order of the path but wanted to develop its setting, shifting the attention from places to people, from things to protagonists, especially those of the less official story, which since the times of Don Gabucci are increased.

And we maintain another fundamental element of his formulation: just as at each stage Don Gvan cast a glance beyond the walls at the surrounding landscape, so now we underline that it is precisely there that we can read the major transformations and that therefore the landscape can be read as a great portrait of the country.

 Today there are no more postcards and no one enjoys portraying places with pencil on paper as Liverani or Costanza Monti did, but the heritage of drawings and photos tells us that Sant'Angelo was and is a castle set in a landscape and that its history is inside and outside the walls up to the contours of the surrounding hills and fields.