Where the story has an address
Not every entry in this atlas has a place. Some do: a pool, a carved façade, a glacier, a village. These are those, with the access point, the path and the date on which the directions were verified — and with a statement, every time, of where they come from and whether anybody actually went.
Castelnuovo al Volturno, a hamlet of Rocchetta a Volturno (province of Isernia).
On the last Sunday of Carnival, the square of Castelnuovo becomes the stage of a pantomime. The zampogna players announce the arrival. The Maone, a sorcerer figure in long goatskins,…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Fiacciano, comune of Fivizzano (province of Massa-Carrara), Lunigiana; valley of the Rosaro stream.
A series of pools of green, transparent water, set into sandstone in tilted beds, linked by small falls. The story attached to them is very short and always the same: the fairies wash…
August 2026 · directions verified on site
Nocera Terinese (province of Catanzaro), Tyrrhenian Calabria.
The vattiente prepares in private, in the catuojo, bathing his legs with a decoction of boiled rosemary. He uses two instruments: the rosa, a smooth cork disc with which he strikes thighs…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Castel San Felice, a hamlet of Sant’Anatolia di Narco (province of Perugia), on the bank of the Nera.
A great dragon infests the valley of the Nera, devours men and livestock and poisons the air. Two hermits — Mauro and his son Felice — decide to finish it, and the way they do it is the…
August 2026 · site visit not made
La Thuile (province of Aosta), Valdigne; Rutor waterfalls and lakes.
Where today there is the glacier there was a rich alp, with fat pastures and many cows. A starving beggar asks for a bowl of milk. The master not only refuses: out of contempt he has the…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, Florence, in front of the basilica and the Ospedale degli Innocenti.
Lanterns of coloured paper, once with a candle inside, carried about on the top of a cane by the boys of Florence on the evening before the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, 8…
September 2026 · site visit not made
Santa Caterina, a hamlet of Roccalbegna (province of Grosseto), less than 4 km from the main village of the comune.
The evening of 24 November, the eve of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Early in the morning the men go up into the wood and cut the chosen tree. In the evening the parish priest goes up in…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, in front of the eastern façade of the basilica and the obelisk.
On the eve of St John the witches of Rome go out and fly over the Lateran, and the city goes to spend the night in the square: «on the eve of St John it is the custom to go at night, as…
September 2026 · site visit not made
Chiusdino (province of Siena), Val di Merse; the abbey on the plain, the hermitage of Montesiepi on the hill.
A knight of the Val di Merse, born around the middle of the 12th century, is converted and withdraws to live as a hermit on a hill above Chiusdino. In December 1180, according to the…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Triora (province of Imperia), upper Valle Argentina.
Between 1587 and 1590, in a village of the upper Valle Argentina struck by years of famine, more than forty women and one man are investigated for witchcraft. The charges are the usual…
August 2026 · site visit not made
Fénis (province of Aosta), the comune of the witchcraft trial of 1439.
The dominant trait of all the Valle d'Aosta legends about the synagogue is not visual, it is acoustic: the common denominator is the deafening noise — bells and handbells, animal cries,…
August 2026 · site visit not made