Dinami

The name comes from the Greek dynàmi, force. And force, here, is geology: the Mesima valley is a textbook graben, with the Serre massif and Monte Poro standing on either side as horsts, and the slope that climbs from the Marepotamo towards the Serre is a fault staircase, steep pitches broken by level shelves. Dinami stands at the upper edge of the first shelf, and so do almost all the villages of the Preserre; higher up, at the lower edge of the next shelf, between six hundred and fifty and eight hundred metres, stand Monsoreto and the mountain hamlets of those same villages. In the village the fault line can be seen with the naked eye: it is the depression that cuts the shelf in two between the Rione Palazzi and contrada Barco, and it is the square of San Rocco.

The same sands are found in the valley floor, up on that high shelf and again on the other side of the valley, on Monte Poro: that is how the movements of the last seven million years can be read. But what the ground gives it also takes away: the earthquake of 1638 did heavy damage, and that of 1659 destroyed almost entirely the feudal centre of Soreto, down in the valley — and Dinami, which until then had been only one of Soreto's hamlets, became from that day the main town. In 1783 the earthquake razed it, and it was rebuilt on the same site; on the thirteenth of November 1959 a flood carried a part of it away. The local dish is pipi e patati, hot peppers and potatoes fried separately and then put together, and among the sweets there are the papuni, biscuits in the shape of a human figure that once had a votive meaning.