Platania

Platania stands on the last spur of Monte Reventino, where the Sila massif opens out like a fan and slopes down towards the plain of Lamezia and the gulf of Sant'Eufemia. The municipal territory climbs from the valley floors to the summit of the Reventino, and inside it there are two more mountains, Monte Faggio and Monte Castelluzzo, three streams and a waterfall, that of the Tiglia. Of its history the sources say very little: what is recorded is that the village grew until the middle of the twentieth century and that since then it has lost more than half its inhabitants, above all through emigration to the United States. What is set down precisely, on the other hand, is the calendar, and it is worth reading because it is made almost entirely of sounds and fires.

The novena of Saint Michael the Archangel runs from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth of September: alongside the vigils in the mother church there are others in the various inhabited clusters scattered over the territory, because the statue of the saint is carried round in procession, and on the evening of the twenty-seventh it comes back into the village accompanied by a torchlight procession along the main street. The Christmas novena begins on the sixteenth of December, and for nine mornings, at first light, Christmas melodies are played along the streets of the village to announce the birth. On the night of Christmas Eve the focara is lit, a bonfire in front of the mother church, and there people wait. From Christmas Eve to Epiphany, instead, the strina goes round: a traditional tune that little groups of friends sing from house to house during the hours of the night, and the families open the door to those unexpected guests and stuff them with every kind of treat. In a village of two thousand people, incidentally, there is also a fencing club.