Gangi, Sicily

To the outside world, Gangi is an obscure hill town tucked away in a remote part of interior Sicily's Nebrodi mountains, but in my family, Gangi is our Jerusalem, our Mecca, our Athens. My grandfather, Carmelo Seminara was born in Gangi and lived there until immigrating to the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century. My dad, Carmen, used to talk about Gangi so much during my childhood, that by the time I visited Gangi myself for the first time, I felt like I already knew the place. Italian hill-towns are a well known commodity in traveler's circles, but Gangi is not on the tourist map, and thus, one can visit today a town that really has not changed much since when my grandfather lived there almost a century ago. Old Gangi looks like a town built by people just a bit tired of being constantly invaded. The road that leads up into the ancient center is so steep and intimidating that only those who have either lived in the town, raced the LeMans course before, or who have a death wish should consider driving up into the center. Want to walk up? Better have a damn good pair of shoes, strong calves and a clean pair of lungs. You don't need a map- just keep going up, up, up until you reach the town's heart, the Piazza del Popolo, or collapse in exhaustion trying.

The modern traveler cannot help but notice what isn't in the old town of Gangi- no restaraunts, no internet cafe's, art galleries, hotels, wine shops, tourist information offices, souvenir stands, or any other business that caters to those that don't live in the immediate area. What Gangi does have is a maze of ancient streets and narrow dwellings populated by people that all know each other and still by there bread, milk and veggies from men who drive by in trucks and hawk their wares by broadcasting over makeshift bullhorns attached to the tops of their trucks. Life in ancient Gangi revolves around the picture perfect Piazza del Popolo, which features a remarkable church that contains a few dozens mummified priests in its basement and an attractive town hall building with a clock tower. In the corner of the piazza sits the Seminara Bar, which is owned by Pino and Mimma Seminara, wonderful people who make what may be the world's most perfect homemade gelato in the world, right in the small back room of the bar. The Seminara's are not relatives of ours- in Gangi there are a few hundred Seminara's- but they treated my wife and I like members of the family from the first time we walked in the door and introduced ourselves.

Gangi's streets were definitely not made for cars. The first time I tried to drive up the center, I made it about half way and then chicken out. The streets are fantastically steep and narrow that even when you have the road to yourself, a simple trip is harrowing. But then when a car tries to come at you going in the opposite direction, either you or he needs to back up and come to some kind of agreement regarding how the situation will proceed. Its not for the faint of heart, and if there are pedestrians near you and the car you are dueling with, they know to hop up on someone's stoop- because the roads definitely aren't wide enough for two cars and pedestrians. Driving is scary, but trying to parallel park is death defying.

The weather can change very fast in Gangi, and at night, Gangi can be a very mysterious place. Fog often rolls into the upper town and enshrouds the whole place in a haze of mist so dense that you may not be able to find your car or the place you are staying in. To really appreciate Gangi, you need to stay up in the old town overnight, and that means asking around for a room or apartment to rent. At night, you can trek up and down the quiet, ancient streets amongst medieval churches and old stone dwellings or you can make the passegiata along the town's corso, nodding to the old men who sit in one part of the square and grinning at the teenagers who play with their cell phones and kiss their boyfriends with gusto.

During our stay in Gangi, we got to know Pino and Mimma Seminara, owners of the Seminara Bar, and their children, Santo and Marianna. They wanted to take us on a tour of the town and since I only understand a bit of Italian, I asked Santo and Marianna, who were 18, and 21, respectively if they had any friends that could translate for us. A long discussion ensued, and they concluded that they did not know anyone who could speak English. I was a bit astonished by this. Gangi is not a big place, but it’s a fair size town, and the Seminara’s seemed to know everyone. Marianna, it turns out, actually did know some English, and she was studying Arabic at university in Palermo. Each weekend she commuted back to Gangi to be with her family. Marianna was, like many Italian teenagers, very close to her parents. She thought nothing of affectionately embracing her dad in public, even in front of her friends, in a way that most American teenagers would find appalling. Though I loved being in Gangi, I could imagine how it would seem dull and provincial to an 18 year old. But when I asked Marianna if she planned to move out after her studies were completed, she insisted that she never wanted to leave Gangi. When my grandfather, Carmelo, was a bit older than her he came to an entirely different conclusion about Gangi, and eventually made his way to the States after working briefly at a hotel in Palermo and then as a cook for the exiled Duke of O’rleans on an estate not far from Palermo.

On our last afternoon in Gangi, Pino’s sister, also named Mimma, and Marianna took us to Gangi’s cemetery, which is perched on the side of a hill and affords a nice view of the surrounding valley, which is green and lush in the spring time. Mimma’s father had died only months before, and she broke down in tears as we passed his grave. She was about 40 and had never married. She lived with her mother, who was a remarkably handsome woman in her 70s, with a kind, welcoming face. Mimma pulled herself together and after some fruitless searching for the graves of my great-grandparents, we headed into a small, little office where a young man, who appeared to be some kind of care-taker, sat listening to a soccer game on the radio. Marianna informed me that they were just about to close, but said we could look through their record books if we wanted to. I did not know what year my great grandparents died, so the search was a bit of an exercise in futility, but being able to pore over the massive, dusty books with their fancy handwritten records , was nonetheless quite interesting. There are a lot of Seminara’s buried in Gangi. Carmelo Seminara was born in 1880 in Gangi, so his parents probably died sometime in the early 20th century, although we don’t know for certain.

As we said goodbye to the Seminara’s and to Gangi, I had the feeling that we were no doubt seen as visitors from a far-away place, but I did feel as though we weren’t just outsiders passing through the place, but rather, descendants of Gangitani’s returning home to see the place. I didn’t just want to return to Gangi for a visit, I wanted to learn Italian and to come back and stay in the place for awhile, try to get a feel for what life was like in this remote part of Sicily. Some day, I might achieve that goal, but Carmelo made a choice a bit more than a hundred years ago, and the result of that decision to leave Gangi, is that we could never really fit in there, no matter how long we stayed or how much Italian we learned. Gangi- like many hill-towns all over rural Italy- is a place that does not embrace change or outsiders. Perhaps, this what was precisely what Carmelo didn’t like about the place, but Gangi’s stubborn refusal to change was what