On January 14, 1968, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit the Belice Valley in western Sicily. In less than two days, the farming village of Gibellina—and its neighboring towns—were reduced to ruins. “All that remains is a shapeless pile of rubble, twisted beams, and crumbled walls. Reconstruction on the site will be impossible: just clearing the rubble would be a futile and impossible task,” wrote geophysicists Mario De Panfilis and Liliana Marcelli of the disaster.

“In these places, life has been extinguished in all its manifestations. The silence of absolute destruction looms hallucinatory, like something detached from the world and from time.” And the inhabitants—no longer having a history made up of tuff and piazzas—divided themselves. Many left for the north or abroad, helped by a government that offered one-way tickets to anywhere. Those who stayed had to start over 18 kilometers away, in Gibellina Nuova.