Experience the "real Italy" in these small mountain towns and villages
Fourth-generation Calitri resident Emma Basile， 29， remembers "the old town as a place for cats， not people，" when she was growing up. But a few years ago， a private development company began buying up a few of the houses， restoring them and selling them to foreign investors as vacation homes. After finishing school in Milan and Naples， Basile returned to Calitri and opened a real-estate and renatal-property-management office that doubles* as the unofficial tourist bureau.
Basile showed us around town， walking us through the castle that's being restored and taking us into cellars where locals age cheese and cure salami.
Thursdays are market days， when older women， dressed in black， shop the open-air stalls stocked* with men's suits and lemons the size of miniature footballs.
Our dollars stretched easily. We sampled one-euro cups of hot chocolate at a stand-up bar on the piazza. At a restaurant called Osteria Three Roses， we sampled pasta cannazze， noodles shaped like hand-rolled cigarettes topped with tomato sauce and sheep-and cow-milk cheeses. Dinner for three was $50.
Basile told us that her mother cried when she decided to move back to Calitri. She hoped her daughter would work abroad or in one of the big Italian cities.
Maybe someday. But right now she's busy chasing her vision of what the old town might once again become.
Sitting in her tiny office， she dreams of the day when couples will walk arm-in-arm along the narrow streets. Shops and art galleries will fill the vacant buildings and cellars. Balconies will overflow with flowers， all signs of a new generation of Calitrians staking* their future on a corner of Italy so many others left behind.
Fourth-generation Calitri resident Emma Basile， 29， remembers "the old town as a place for cats， not people，" when she was growing up. But a few years ago， a private development company began buying up a few of the houses， restoring them and selling them to foreign investors as vacation homes. After finishing school in Milan and Naples， Basile returned to Calitri and opened a real-estate and renatal-property-management office that doubles* as the unofficial tourist bureau.
Basile showed us around town， walking us through the castle that's being restored and taking us into cellars where locals age cheese and cure salami.
Thursdays are market days， when older women， dressed in black， shop the open-air stalls stocked* with men's suits and lemons the size of miniature footballs.
Our dollars stretched easily. We sampled one-euro cups of hot chocolate at a stand-up bar on the piazza. At a restaurant called Osteria Three Roses， we sampled pasta cannazze， noodles shaped like hand-rolled cigarettes topped with tomato sauce and sheep-and cow-milk cheeses. Dinner for three was $50.
Basile told us that her mother cried when she decided to move back to Calitri. She hoped her daughter would work abroad or in one of the big Italian cities.
Maybe someday. But right now she's busy chasing her vision of what the old town might once again become.
Sitting in her tiny office， she dreams of the day when couples will walk arm-in-arm along the narrow streets. Shops and art galleries will fill the vacant buildings and cellars. Balconies will overflow with flowers， all signs of a new generation of Calitrians staking* their future on a corner of Italy so many others left behind.