Guardia Piemontese

Guardia Piemontese is a town of about 1,760 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, on the southern stretch of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast, and a place unique in the whole South of Italy: in the alleys of the village, 515 metres above the sea, people still speak Guardiolo, an Occitan language brought here between the 12th and 14th centuries by Waldensian settlers from the Piedmont valleys. It is the last Waldensian colony in Calabria, and its deepest memory is tied to one night, that of 5 June 1561, which gave its name to the village’s main gate. Below, on the coast, lie the Marina hamlet and Guardia Piemontese Terme station.

Geography

The village sits on a hill 515 metres above sea level, looking over the Tyrrhenian between Acquappesa and Fuscaldo: the watchtower that gives it its name, built around the year 1000 to spot Saracen ships, can be picked out even from the coast. The Marina, of recent development, stretches along the shore around the railway station, beside the Terme Luigiane spa which lies in the territory of Acquappesa. Between the two cores climbs the SS283 state road “delle Terme Luigiane”, and the village overlooks the whole gulf from Capo Bonifati towards Paola.

History

The village was born as La Guardia, from the name of its watchtower, and was long a hamlet of Fuscaldo: Guardia Fiscalda, Guardia dei Valdi, Guardia Lombarda. The adjective Piemontese came after Italian unification, to recall where its people came from. The Waldensians, followers of Peter Waldo, came down to Calabria between the 12th and 14th centuries from the Alpine valleys of Angrogna, Chisone, Pellice and Germanasca, from the Dauphiné and Provence, in search of land to farm and of peace: Calabrian landowners offered them plots in return for a rent, and at Montalto, San Sisto and La Guardia, which they built themselves, communities of “Ultramontani” arose who prayed in Occitan at home and lived without friction with their Catholic neighbours. Itinerant preachers, the “barba”, kept faith and ties with Piedmont alive.

Everything changed with the Reformation. In 1532 the Waldensians joined Protestantism and in 1559 the pastor Gian Luigi Pascale, from Cuneo, arrived from Geneva; at La Guardia, with the support of the poorer peasants and artisans, he had a place of worship built and preached openly. The feudal lord Salvatore Spinelli, marquis of Fuscaldo, had him arrested on 2 May 1559; Pascale was burned in Rome in September 1560. The Roman Inquisition, led by Cardinal Michele Ghislieri, the future Pius V, sent the Dominican Valerio Malvicino and on 9 February 1561 issued ordinances forbidding the Waldensians to gather in groups of more than six, to speak their language or to marry among themselves, imposing daily Mass and the yellow “abitello” of penitents. The community rebelled; the troops of the viceroy of Naples, led by Marino and Ascanio Caracciolo, sacked San Sisto on 29 May and marched on La Guardia. According to the most widespread account it was Spinelli himself who brought fifty soldiers disguised as prisoners into the village: on the night of 5 June 1561 they opened the main gate and the massacre swept away hundreds of people, thrown from the tower, put to the sword or burned, while seventy houses went up in flames. The survivors ended up in the prisons of Cosenza and Montalto, where on 11 June another 86 or 88 Waldensians were executed; historians estimate the total victims in Calabria at between 600 and 6,000. Those who escaped were forcibly converted and watched over by the Dominicans, who founded their friary in the village in 1600.

The language, however, endured. In 1927 the municipality was merged with Acquappesa as “Guardia Piemontese Terme”, becoming independent again in 1945; in 1983 it was twinned with Torre Pellice, one of the places its founders came from, and since 2008 the 5th of June has been the Day of Remembrance.

What to see

You enter the village through the Porta del Sangue, the main gate of the old walls: cobbles, brick fragments and roughly squared stones, and a name that since 1561 has told of the blood that ran down from the castle along the lanes until it passed beyond it. A few dozen metres away opens the small Porta Carruggio, the secondary entrance, while the base of the third gate is embedded in a palace on via Panoramica. In the stone-paved alleys you still meet the peephole doors, which can be opened only from outside: the Inquisition imposed them after the massacre, so that the Dominican friars could watch over the lives of the forcibly converted families. One, restored, is in the Waldensian Museum; at least three remain along the streets.

In piazza Chiesa Valdese, where the temple of the reformed once stood, is the Val Pellice Rock: a slab of Alpine rock brought in 1975 from the mountains of Torre Pellice, carved with the verse of Isaiah “Look to the rock from which you were hewn” and, below, the plaque with the 118 names of the people of Guardia killed on 5 June 1561. Not far away the bas-relief by sculptor Giuseppe Tarantino, donated by the Piedmont Region in 2000, tells of Piedmontese and Calabrian emigration.

The church of Sant’Andrea apostolo, the patron’s, has a tuff portal topped by the coat of arms with the tower. The church of the Santissimo Rosario, former friary of the Dominicans founded in 1600 and consecrated in 1616, keeps a hand-carved mid-17th-century wooden choir: 33 stalls in two tiers, armrests with female figures, panels divided by tall columns; behind the altar lies the tomb of Mario Spinelli, the marquis’s son, who died in 1636. Of the Spinelli palace, the feudal lord’s summer residence, the portal remains with the crowned swan of the family arms. At the top of the village the year-1000 watchtower overlooks the square used for performances and the sea.

Two museums explain all the rest. The Waldensian Museum, in the “Gian Luigi Pascale” cultural centre of the Tavola Valdese, opened in 1983 for the twinning with Torre Pellice and reopened in 2011 for the 450th anniversary of the massacre, tells with panels, documents and finds the history of the Waldensians in Calabria. The municipal Occitan Multimedia Museum, opened in January 2011, retraces Guardia’s culture through video and reportage and holds a library on Calabria’s three linguistic minorities: Occitan, Greek and Albanian.

Guardiolo, a langue d’oc on the Tyrrhenian

Guardiolo, gardiòl to those who speak it, is a variety of Occitan, the langue d’oc of southern France, the Piedmont valleys and the Val d’Aran: Guardia Piemontese is the only place in the South of Italy where it is spoken. Until the 1950s three variants could be told apart, one for each quarter of the small old town, a legacy of the different regions the settlers came from. Research carried out in 1999 found a language still alive: two thirds of the inhabitants said they always used it at home and with friends, while according to the linguist Fiorenzo Toso in 2007 the speakers numbered about 340 out of 1,860 residents. Keeping it alive are the Occitan association Gàrdia d’Òc, with its “Chambra dal Conselh” opened in 2010 and the folk group Vent de Nòtes, the Occitan Week in August and the feast of Saint Martin on 11 November, devoted to the French saint, with songs, dances and new wine.

The village calendar

On 6 January the “Bella Stella” escorts the Magi with a torchlight procession through the alleys to the church of Sant’Andrea, where the Holy Family is played by a young couple with the village’s latest newborn. 5 June is the Day of Remembrance established in 2008 for the massacre of 1561. On 6 July the Marina celebrates Saint Maria Goretti with white and red roses and a procession along the hamlet’s streets; the first Sunday of October belongs to Our Lady of the Rosary, 30 November to Saint Andrew the Apostle, patron of the village, with procession, band and fireworks.

Getting there

Guardia Piemontese is served by Guardia Piemontese Terme station, on the Tyrrhenian railway, at the Marina; from the coast the SS283 state road “delle Terme Luigiane” climbs to the village, while the SS18 runs along the shore. By car from the A2 “del Mediterraneo” motorway: from the north, exit Rende/Cosenza nord and SS107 to Paola, then SS18 northwards; from the south, exit Falerna and SS18 northwards. The nearest airport is Lamezia Terme.