Cunziria (also spelled Canziria) is an 18th-century village in

Vizzini Vizzini is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Catania, on the island of Sicily, southern Italy. It is located from Catania in the Hyblaean Mountains, on the most northwesterly slopes of Monte Lauro. The commune territory is bou ...

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

History

Cunziria is situated in an open valley adjacent to hills covered with prickly pears. The buildings' structure and architectural details make them an example of the rural agricultural style of 18th-century Sicily. The ruins of the church of Saint 'Egidio, which may date from

Roman times In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingd ...

, are located in the village. Due to Cunziria's proximity to a spring, tanning was once a successful local industry, using

tannins Tannins (or tannoids) are a class of astringent, polyphenolic biomolecules that bind to and precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids. The term ''tannin'' is widely applied to any large po ...

extracted from

sumac Sumac or sumach ( , )—not to be confused with poison sumac—is any of the roughly 35 species of flowering plants in the genus ''Rhus'' (and related genera) of the cashew and mango tree family, Anacardiaceae. However, it is '' Rhus coriaria ...

. The village huts were created from an iron-colored local stone and were strategically positioned on the surrounding hills to increase sun exposure and hasten the drying of animal skins. Skins were cleaned in large tanks dug into rocks, some of which were later dug into the ground. Several have been uncovered in recent excavations. The tanning industry began to decline around the end of the 1920s, although it continued until the 1960s.

Legend

Cunziria is the setting for a famous duel, which

Giovanni Verga Giovanni Carmelo Verga di Fontanabianca (; 2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian Literary realism, realist (''Verismo (literature), verista'') writer. His novels ''I Malavoglia'' (1881) and ''Mastro-don Gesualdo'' (1889) are widel ...

described in his short story ', which was later adapted into the opera of the same name by Mascagni. According to the legend, the married Lola and her paramour, ex-soldier Turiddu, secretly met in Cunziria under the light of a full moon to consummate their love. Lola's husband, Alfio, a mule-driver had been away working in Francofonte. Lola and Turiddu's affair was shortly discovered, and rumors began to spread around the village, reaching Alfio. Feeling dishonored, Alfio challenged Turiddu to a duel "in the prickly-pear grove of Cantina." The combatants walk to Cunziria together, where they exchange blows before Alfio kills Turridu. In Verga's telling, the location of the lovers' assignations is not stated. The affair is betrayed by Santa, Turiddu's jealous ex-lover, whom he wooed to make Lola jealous when Lola first spurned his advances.

Popular culture

In 1983, the film adaptation of ''Cavalleria Rusticana'', directed by

Franco Zeffirelli Gian Franco Corsi Zeffirelli (; 12 February 1923 – 15 June 2019) was an Italian stage and film director, producer, production designer and politician. He was one of the most significant opera and theatre directors of the post–World War II e ...

, was filmed in Cunziria. The director displayed the splendor of the place, which was described as "a strange mixture of theatrical fiction and reality of rural life, a flow and a reflux of the theater in the truth and of the truth in the theater." In 1996, Gabriele Lavia's film '' La Lupa'' was filmed in Cunziria. Cunziria's well-preserved buildings allowed Lavia to show an archaic society in which men and women worked continuously in the fields. His movie had a dark meaning; this city was haunted by ghosts, and everybody was possessed, but acted normally. These ghosts possessed more and more people to create an uprising. Soon, the whole world would be under the possession of the Cunzirian ghosts.

References

{{authority control Vizzini