The sensation of reaching an abandoned hamlet from the centre of Fanano.
The abandoned hamlet of Caselle has been a ‘ghost town’ since 1953, when it was hit by a landslide, forcing the 9 resident families to relocate. Until then, Caselle had been a flourishing outlying hamlet of Serrazzone on the Via Romea, the road to Ospitale, directly below Lake Pratignano.
The inhabitants dedicated their lives to agriculture and sheep farming, with some of them transhuming to the provinces of Ferrara and Rovigo.
The ‘end’ of Caselle was widely reported in the press at the time, and even on a national scale in the famous weekly newsreel ‘Settimana Incom’.
Towards the end of the 1960s, Caselle transformed into a hippie community, with the village coming back to life, only to die out for good in the 1980s. Thanks to the revival of trekking, this small, untouched hamlet – so full of history, with its ruins now surrounded and reclaimed by nature – has been rediscovered over recent years, and is the subject of many photographs and stories posted by walkers and mountain bikers.
The itinerary
Starting from the centre of Fanano, follow CAI (Italian Alpine Club) trail no. 407 to the locality of “Due Ponti” (Two Bridges). Having reached the junction for Ospitale, keep to the left, towards Serrazzone, and then, past the bridge over the Ospitale stream, take the first right. Keeping to the right, you will reach Caselle in less than an hour, going around the abandoned manor house of Casa dei Fuochi and the roadside shrine that you will find on the left.
Once you have reached the hamlet, to get back to Fanano, you can either go back the same way as you came or, alternatively, you can continue in the direction of Lake Pratignano (a fairly steep path) or carry on down the road to Ospitale, in a circle along the tarmacked road.
