South, land of storytellers, poets, philosophers, men of culture. A patrimony not rarely questioned even in the ministerial educational programs. Today the difficult and beautiful land of Calabria can boast this new garrison of culture. And it can do so under the aegis of one of the happiest associative-institutional realities in this sense: that of the Literary Parks, in fact.
Let’s go to the origins of this news. As is well known to historians and experts, in particularly dramatic years in Italian history, an internment camp was also built in Calabria, where hundreds of opponents of Nazi-fascism were imprisoned. A large field. We are in Ferramonti, a hamlet of Tarsia, in the province of Cosenza. Here stands an International Museum of Memory that reminds future generations, with a rich documentation, those terrible events, which saw inmate a well-known psychiatrist and German pediatrician opposed to the Nazi regime, Ernst Bernhard.
A great protagonist of psychoanalytic research. He was arrested in Rome in 1940 but then interned in Calabria, in Ferramonti. He goes there as an “enemy enemy”, remaining there for twelve months. The Tarsia camp was the main among the internment sites opened by the fascist regime between June and September 1940. The structure was freed by the British in September 1943 and officially closed on December 11, 1945.
A pioneer of Jungian thought, Bernhard was, according to his pupils and friends, “an original man and analyst, perhaps bizarre, multifaceted to the point of loss”. Neopitagorico, had for estimators Cristina Campo, Gabriella Bemporad, Natalia Ginzburg, Bobi Bazlen, Federico Fellini, Giorgio Manganelli, Adriano Olivetti and others.
Many events will characterize the park in their own months. An opportunity to visit the village too, Tarsia. We are in the valley of the river Crati, towards the great plain of Sibari, in the middle of the long and large province of Cosenza. Famous for herds of cattle, Tarsia has 2000 inhabitants. Land historically devoted to San Francesco di Paola, has a territory that allows the complete immersion in nature: a real oasis of peace. The ancient Caprasia boasts a beautiful parish church dedicated to the SS. Peter and Paul, with valuable processional statues, one of the Pauline mystic. Also noteworthy are the churches of Santa Maria dell’Olivella, the Madonna della Cintura and Consolazione, these last eighteenth century.
Important then the abbey of Santa Maria di Camiglino, a considerable medieval structure built by the Benedictines. Unmissable is the nature reserve of Lago di Tarsia, established in 1990 by the Calabria Region. The lake is artificial, due to the damming of the Crati river (50s). The area is surrounded by uncontaminated and uncultivated Mediterranean vegetation (holm oak, elm, tamarisk, poplar and strawberry trees). The reasons for arriving at Tarsia are not lacking then. Between happy nature and human history, a sad story that helps to reflect.
