Terracing Is Revived For Safety
VERNAZZA, Italy — The teenagers panted heavily as they climbed up the steep slope, the Mediterranean sun glittering on the sea far below. Along the way, they stopped to survey the stone walls bordering the winding roads, carefully taking measurements.
“When you rebuild a wall, you dig among the rubble until you find the original corner stones, and start from there,” their guide, Margherita Ermirio, instructed them.
After several years abroad, Ms. Ermirio, 32, has returned to her hometown, Vernazza, one of five villages that make up Cinque Terre, the vertical, gravity- defying cluster of homes that cling to the cliffs of Italy’s northwestern coast. She has since fought to restore and preserve an old but dying art in much of Italy: terracing.
The dry stone walls she is teaching young people to build do more than form the picturesque landscape that has made Cinque Terre famous. The different-size plots — positioned to carefully caress the contours of the hillsides — prevent this unique place from sliding into the sea.
Ms. Ermirio’s mission, part of a Unesco-sponsored program, is to help restore those walls and to strengthen this younger generation’s connection to their land. It is the terraces that have for centuries allowed the land to be cultivated, with vineyards and apple and lemon groves. The permeable dry stone walls that border those plots absorb needed water from heavy rains, while allowing the runoff to flow gently downhill, preventing the land from washing away.
Since the 1960s, however, many farmers have abandoned their plots to move to cities. The walls have been left in disrepair. Today, 8 percent of the region of Liguria, where Cinque Terre is, is terraced. Roughly half of that area has been forsaken.
Italy may have the most terraced land in Europe, with more than 160,000 kilometers of dry stone walls — 20 times the length of the Great Wall of China.
“During the flood, the stone walls came down to the beach, mixed up with mud and water,” Ms. Ermirio said, recalling the flood of 2011, which took three lives.
In Italy, only at the foot of the Alps, in the region of Trentino, have authorities recently created a public school for dry-stone building. So far, it has certified 15 local artisans.
“The dry stone walls used to be the only way to cultivate in certain territories, now we rediscover them to make our landscape more true to what it was, and lure tourists,” said Iva Berardi, the director of the Trentino Mountain Academy.
In Cinque Terre, Anselmo Crovara, 82, has made himself the custodian of the region’s history. He learned to build dry stone walls when he was a little boy. As long as he can remember, the landscape of vineyards that follow the curve of the steep hillside has never been altered, he said.
“You see, a stone is a monument,” Mr. Crovara said. “It is heritage here.”