Narrator: Marianna Febbi – Tour Guide

Getting close to Pianiano is like watching a flower bloom. The village is a map of its stories, carved into arches, streets and lampposts. A show of lives, seasons and transformations. In front of the Pianiano city walls, walking along its alleys or taking a break in the small plaza, we can experience a time long gone in its purest form.

Pianiano village today is a solitary cluster of homes sitting atop a tuff cliff. The path to enter the village while following the Sentiero brigando goes through a small and fascinating excavated road. The residential area’s origins are ancient and it has been depopulated and repopulated several times during the course of its history. It was Benedetto XIV who, in the XVIII century, improved the fate of the small village which, during the 1600s had suffered a complete exodus of the residential population because of malaria. The pope offered Pianiano to several Albanian families from Scutari who had escaped persecution by the Ottoman empire. Traces of this historical landscape are still visible today in the local toponymy. The permanent residents take loving care of this small village by adorning it with plants and flowers and offering visitors, with a silent welcome, a warm atmosphere suspended in time, a palpable enchantment of everything that ever was, currently is, and will be.