In Val di Vara there is a violin that mysteriously plays all night and in Fosdinovo the ghost of a beautiful young lady walled for an impossible love. Journey into the mysteries of La Spezia and surroundings.
Ghosts and mysteries also live along the coasts of the Gulf of Poets and surrounding territories. From the Vara Valley to the Val di Magra there is plenty of reports of ghostly presences and strange phenomena. If in Scogna Sottana – a town near Sesta Godano – it is said of the melodies that light up the nights of a violinist house, in Fosdinovo the rooms of the castle are still inhabited by the most classic phantom, the one of an aristocratic girl who died for love. And you know that on the Castellana hill , in Campiglia, some people swear they have seen the whole world?
& gt; The Phantom of the Violinist House in Scogna Sottana
Scogna Sottana is a small fraction of the Sesta Godano village in Val di Vara. The quiet Val di Vara here is not so placid. Among the houses of the village there is one in which once lived a young violinist , who suddenly disappeared (according to one version of the story, the young man was killed by a disease; according to another, he suddenly disappeared). Inside he building was found only his violin , locked in a custody inside a cabinet.
According to several testimonies, often at night you hear the violin playing in the building’s empty rooms , while around the house some say you can hear crying and screaming.
Bianca Malaspina, phantom of the Fosdinovo castle
The beautiful Fosdinovo is dominated by the castle of the Malaspina family, which can be visited by tourists, and – some are ready to swear – haunted by the ghost of the beautiful Bianca Maria Aloisia Malaspina.
The beautiful aristocratic girl, daughter of Giacomo and Olivia Malaspina Grimaldi, fell in love with the stableman. Her parents, so snobbish, did not approve her feelings and tried in every way to discourage the girl’s passion. But noone can control the hear, and not even the monastery convinced the girl to give up her love.
The solution adopted by her parents was therefore drastic: the stableman was dismissed and Maria Alosia was walled in a cell in the castle’s dungeon, along with a dog (symbol of fidelity) and a boar (sign of rebellion).
Since then, she has never abandoned her place of imprisonment and it is said that you can see her wandering within the castle premises, with her beautiful blonde hair falling over the shoulders.
The man ho could view Argentina from Campiglia
It F.W.C. Trafford was a trump player, what he recounted in a book you could quickly archive with a “he drank a glass too many.” Trafford – though – was a naturalist and therefore a man devoted to careful scientific observation. </ P>
The English scientist – on a morning visit to the Gulf – in March 1869, went up on the Castellana hill , looked toward the horizon … and was stunned. According to his account, in fact, not only he was able to see the whole Mediterranean Sea, but he had a vision that lasted about five hours in which he dould clearly see Greenland , Siberia and then South America and even Australia </ b>.
Trafford told his incredible experience in the script “Amphiorama ou la vue du monde des montagne de La Spezia. Fenomène inconnu, pour la première fois observè et decrit avec une carte du Continent polaire” published in 1874 in Zurich by bookseller Orel Flussy. Of the text, to which even the geologist Giovanni Cappellini showed interest, the naturalist gave a description of what he saw.
Perhaps it is not overstatement to say that the Gulf is a universe!
This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)