Valle del Belice. Night between January 14 and 15, 1968. The earth shakes. It's not a hurricane, it's not a tsunami, it's an earthquake...9th degree on the Mercalli scale, a force capable of leaving behind about three hundred dead, over ninety thousand injured, and just as many homeless. "A landscape resembling an atomic bomb" was how a pilot who flew over the area immediately after the tragic event described it. A wound impossible to heal even after more than 50 years.

Poggioreale, a splendid urban center founded by Prince Morso Naselli in 1642, is one of the towns in the Valle del Belice destroyed by that angel of death which, after almost half a century, lies there in silence, a monument to pain.

Venturing into Poggioreale is always arduous, and I'm not talking about physical exertion, but emotional. Taking photographs is not easy. Entering abandoned houses, among vintage clothing and newspapers, school desks, children's books, abandoned cars, empty oil mills, perfectly conveys the magnitude of a disastrous event that is an integral part of Sicilian history.

The pain is felt as if it were a chilling wind freezing the blood, a village now deserted but still glimpsed dressed in Sunday's attire, an outfit made of typical Sicilian colors; the rooftops of houses, the walls with vibrant hues, the floors still adorned with period tiles, play hide-and-seek, peering through the rubble.
Poggioreale is visited with order, composure, but above all, silence-a respectful silence, entering a place of worship, a monument to remembrance.

Ninety thousand homeless people are not just a number but a thunderous roar, and three hundred dead are a silent cry that everyone should listen to in prayer.