 Barbagelata il Tetto della Liguria (Barbagelata the Roof of Liguria)The village, part of the Municipality of Lorsica in the Province of Genoa, is located in the Ligurian Apennines at 1,115 meters above sea level, along the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri (part of the European Walking Route E1) at the confluence of the Valleys Fontanabuona, Aveto and Trebbia, and it is now unpopulated during the better part of the year. In the long affectionate tale the author, a primary school teacher and the son of the owner of the old inn in the Village, unravels the details of everyday life, rich with ancient traditions that mark the daily trials of the mountain in the years from 1925 to 1963, the year the village was reached by a road open to vehicles. Life which also passes through five long years of the World War II during which Barbagelata, strategically located to control the three valleys, was put on fire and destroyed. The book recounts the life of mountain farmers in a village two hours away from the nearest road, riding a mule, with an economy that revolved around their cows: the sale of fattened calves and cheese were the only means to give people the meager income with which to survive. The town's name, Barbagelata (literal translation: icy beard), gives by itself the idea how hard life was in such a small, isolated village. The book also talks about many residents who, during the first part of the twentieth century, migrated to North America and Latin American countries in search of better living conditions. Even the Italian economic boom of the fifties and sixties, and the improved connections by road encouraged the inhabitants to leave; nowadays, only a few of them come back during the summer vacations. The patient work done by Andrea M. Cavagnaro in putting on paper the memories of the villagers, the events, the language, the place names and the mountain farmer's tools, is valuable for giving us evidence that will remain permanently in our memory. Without this work, we would have lost an important piece of the collective identity of Liguria. The phonetic transcription of Genovese dialect was intentionally left as the author has interpreted it so that no corrective action might disturb the originality of the work. No printed copies of the book are available, but you can freely download the Acrobat pdf version from this site. The language of the book is Italian and Genovese. Andrea Masilio Cavagnaro Andrea M. Cavagnaro (1914-2001) was born in Barbagelata, studied in Rapallo at the Somaschi Friars school and in Genoa at the Magistrali Lambruschini, then entered the University of Turin at the beginning of World War II. After achieving tenure in the state school system, he taught for many years in several remote villages in the Fontanabuona Valley, in Lavagna and in Chiavari, where he was part of the generation of the "grand" primary school teachers who have shaped the baby boom generation of Chiavari. He finished his career as the Manager for Public Assistance to primary school pupils of Chiavari.
Throughout his he life has always shown a strong attachment to his native village, which he could describe so vividly having lived the experience in first person and having (probably the only one in his generation) the tools and culture for telling his memories to us.
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