A new discovery in a corner of Campania less known than it deserves. We are talking about the Upper Casertano and in particular the Roccamonfina area. Once upon a time there was a volcano, which fortunately has been extinct for 50,000 years. The traces left by this volcano are a caldera of 6 km in diameter, covered with chestnut woods, and several thermal springs. Among the many villages perched on the slopes of the Roccamonfina volcano we went to visit Valogno, a really small village, with a hundred inhabitants and many empty houses. For some years now, Valogno has been trying to relaunch the town based on tourism and the enhancement of the village through murals; the Valogno Borgo D'Arte association (https://valogno-borgo-darte.business.site/), created by Giovanni Casale and his wife Dora, has promoted this relaunch, and the result is these over forty murals scattered through the streets of the village. From our point of view, that of those who travel in a wheelchair, Valogno is not a very easy town: the main road, Via Palazzo, has an ancient pavement and after a few tens of meters it acquires a considerable slope that puts both chairs to the test, manuals and electrical ones. However, even for us it is possible to see a large part of the murals of Valogno, and for this reason we document them by reproducing some glimpses of the country, including those inaccessible to us.
What do you think? We do not consider ourselves up to par with the disdainful critics who on Trip Advisor have defined these murals as "Disney", but we really liked the project to revive the country starting from its walls and we wanted to document it. For lunch we had to move to Roccamonfina, and in particular to this place inaugurated in August which meets our requirements, even if at the entrance there is a threshold of about 15 cm (but we were told that the installation of a ramp): Ristovineria Nudo e Crudo (*): Piazza Nicola Amore 23, Roccamonfina https://risto-vineria-nudo-e-crudo.business.site/ (*) symbol indicating the presence of toilets equipped for the disabled. We conclude with some images of Roccamonfina: in the main square there is this giant pan for chestnuts (called "vrollaro") which in 2018 was approved in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest pan in the world, ousting the previous Portuguese record holder. In the recent Chestnut Festival, about 1000 kg were cooked in this pan!
For the last image we went a little outside the town until we found a so-called "nevèra", that is to say one of the constructions used in the past centuries to preserve the ice of the winter months to be used in the summer ones.
