Ferruzzano

Here there are more treading vats than anywhere else in the world: more than a hundred and sixty have been counted. They are basins cut into the rock, usually two of them, joined by a small channel: in them the grapes were trodden. Some are a thousand years old and carry a Byzantine cross or Greek and Armenian letters carved into them.

On 23 October 1907 the earthquake killed a hundred and fifty-eight people, eight per cent of the village; the houses built afterwards, though, withstood the Messina shock of 1908. In the old village, its golden sandstone houses now empty, several films and a television series have been shot; the new amphitheatre has been named after John Lennon.