There is something quintessentially magical and mystical about Bussana Vecchia. More than anything it is a village that should not be, for on a cold day’s dawn 125 years ago this hilltop of old stone houses was shaken to death by a vicious earthquake (the first ever recorded by a seismograph) . Even the church caved in, killing many people who were there to celebrate a wedding. Cursed and shunned, Bussana was abandoned in fear, its people resettled some distance away.
Such property as remained was expropriated by the state in payment for the resettlement program […]
And so the life and history of Bussana ended. Until the 1960s, that is, when a group of artists saw in its unprepossessing ruins an ideal location to live in freely and peacefully, in every sense of what that meant in the swinging sixties. The local authorities said these ‘hippies’ and ‘alternative lifestylers’ were just common squatters and should be gone, but no-one really did anything much about it, either then or now.
So Bussana has freely and peacefully grown into a colony of international artists, several of whom quite renowned. Because of them and the odd sense of semi-ruin and semi-settlement, with all the beauty the artists have created around them, Bussana is much visited. Each artist exhibits their work in their ateliers and shops too, so there’s plenty to see, admire and buy.[…]
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