Pentedattilo “The hand of the devil”
In Calabria there are really many places of rare beauty and for sure one of these is Pentedattilo, a ghost town located in a village in the municipality of Melito Porto Salvo, in the Province of Reggio Calabria.
Pentedattilo is perched on the cliff of Mount Calvary and is nicknamed “the devil’s hand” because of the particular shape of the rocks that can be seen in the background of the country; these have the form of five gigantic fingers that come out of the ground. Pentedattilo in fact derives from the Greek: penta + daktylos, indeed five fingers.
Background
Pentedattilo was founded by the Greeks, precisely a Chalcis colony in 640 BC, becoming an important economic center in the area. Later, in Roman times, it was used as a military center, in fact its particular shape and strategic geographical position (to control the torrent Sant’Elia) makes the village an ideal military zone.
Subsequently Pentedattilo lived moments of decline and then recovery, passed into the hands: first of the Byzantines, during this period it suffered many lootings by the Saracens and later by the Duke of Calabria; and then the Normans.
Over the years Pentedattilo passed from hand to hand to various noble families, to then end up acquired by the Alberti family with the title of Marquis. Unfortunately this family is famous for a very tragic event known as the Massacre of Alberti.
In 1760 the feud was sold to Clement and then in 1823 to Ramirez. In 1783 Pentedattilo suffered serious damages due to an earthquake, then there was a depopulation that brought Pentedattilo to become a hamlet of Melito Porto Salvo. In the eighties of the twentieth century Pentedattilo was rediscovered and slowly became the tourist destination that you can visit today.
Massacre of Alberti
It’s from the massacre that were born legends about ghosts. In short what happened was that the Baron Bernardino Abenavoli di Montebello fell in love with the sister of the Marquis Lorenzo Alberti, Antonietta Alberti. But when he learned of the official engagement of the Marchioness with the son of the Viceroy of Spain, Don Petrillo Cortez, Bernardino went on a rampage and put a plan in place for bloody revenge. On the night of 16th April 1686, with the complicity of a servant of the Alberti who betrayed them, Bernardino together with a group of armed men managed to enter the castle Pentedattilo; the massacre that followed saw the death of many people including Lorenzo Alberti and the brother of 9 years, both brutally killed. There were spared only a few people such as Don Petrillo Cortez and Antonietta Alberti, who was abducted by Bernardino and forced to go to him in marriage. Bernardino finally was forced to flee from the military expedition sent by the Viceroy Cortez. He never returned, the marriage was annulled and the members of the expedition were arrested and killed by decapitation. It is said that sometimes, at night, you can still hear the screams of the victims.