The Barigazzo mount

"We don't need temples, churches or mosques, those are inventions of men who seek power over other men. Nature has created for everyone, for free, the most beautiful temple in the world: the forest."

(Samarah Matesic) 

BEECH TREES, CHESTNUT TREES, VERTIGINOUS ROCKY RIDGES, GHOST VILLAGES AND A MYSTERIOUS LOST CITY

Mount Barigazzo and its territory is one of the most beautiful areas in my opinion of our Parma Apennines, a rugged, wild and isolated area as I like it, with imposing and centuries-old chestnut and beech woods that create suggestive natural scenarios of incomparable beauty and charm. Then there are beautiful rock formations, the famous crests, and many other interesting peculiarities.

You can reach Barigazzo mainly from three valleys: Val Ceno, Val Mozzola and Val Noveglia: each itinerary is worth taking, and will give everyone beautiful emotions, in every season of the year.

From Val Ceno follow the signs for Tosca, and then for Mount Barigazzo. Along the steep road you come to a small dirt parking lot on the right, where there is a beautiful stone fountain and an aqueduct, there are signs for Città d'Umbria. From here, path 809 takes us to the archaeological site, reachable in a few minutes, and then continues towards the crests and the summit. Following the asphalt road instead, after a few dozen meters on the right we find path 809 A that leads directly and steeply to the famous crests: be careful, the North one is very dangerous.

You will also find signs for the mysterious "Lago di Giorgio", a small lake that apparently no one has ever seen!

The two rocky crests are very spectacular, the North one is dangerous and for expert hikers without vertigo, the second one is quieter, but if you want you can also pass in the middle between the two following the small wooded valley: all three routes then converge towards the top of the mountain. The views are beautiful, and range over Val Ceno, Monte Dosso and Val Noveglia. On the vertiginous North ridge live two spectacular trees, two of the most beautiful beech trees I have ever seen, they are incredible, grown proud and proud on a rugged, steep and poor terrain, they are a true hymn to strength and courage! They have a beautiful shape slender towards the sky, and an "aerial" tangle of roots like tentacles with which these trees seem to "walk".

The summit of the mountain is preceded by large meadows dotted with large beech trees, among which free horses often graze. There are also some modern buildings that are like a finger in an eye, they serve for a festival that is held in the summer on the mountain and that attracts many people even from far away.

Among these meadows there is also a beautiful little church, if looked at carefully it presents the front part more modern than the rear apse, built with much older stones. These are the same stones of the original church that was located in ancient times right on the crest of the thin North ridge, the one where there are also my favorite beech trees. The traces of the foundations are still visible and a stone marker with a plaque keeps memory of the place.

From the summit the view ranges freely at 360 ° offering a spectacular panorama of the main valleys and mountains of Parma. Other paths, such as 803, which start from the crests, lead to the abandoned villages of Pareto, Pianelleto and Lavacchielli, and to other interesting destinations, such as Mount La Tagliata, La Disperata and La Nuda, all places with rather sinister names, but which nevertheless arouse a great deal of curiosity, and this entire territory has a wild and rugged flavour that is very fascinating.

The climb from Val Mozzola is also very beautiful; once past the village of Mariano on the left you will find the signs for path 811 and 811 C which lead to the summit, passing through a very suggestive wooded and rocky environment. You also pass near a rocky spur on which a "castle" once stood, a small fortified place, one of the many that dotted our territory, and now completely lost.

I am not suited to give directions on travel times, because by letting myself be captured by the beauty of the places and continually stopping to take photographs and explore every single stone, I often lose track of time, however in general, from both sides, at a leisurely pace, in a couple of hours you comfortably reach the summit enjoying the walk.

Along these paths you really have the sensation of being in remote and lost places, and with the right spirit you come into deep contact with yourself and with the energies of Nature. They are those places where you always willingly return, to which you become attached and which become part of your interior landscapes.

Always check the directions with an updated map before setting out, and study your itinerary carefully, because the paths can change over time, both in the route and in the numbering.

THE MYSTERIOUS CITY OF UMBRIA

Taking path 809, a few minutes' walk from the car park, you reach the base of a hill on which stood the ancient settlement of Città d'Umbrià, which no one knows exactly what it is! At the base of the hill there is a small lake, or rather a pond, from here a short branch off from the main path that leads to the top, where we are welcomed by a suggestive clearing, a clearing in the woods, surrounded by a series of centuries-old beech trees arranged in an amphitheatre, a very suggestive place, which recalls a sort of witches' clearing, a magical forest, where it is not difficult to imagine scenes of magical rituals, licentious sabbaths or powerful druids celebrating the forces of Nature.

Around the perimeter of this clearing, there are the remains of what were the walls of this settlement, there are also the foundations of at least one tower, and other few semblances of human works, which sink into the damp darkness of the earth; it is all extremely very suggestive, but everything is still reduced to a few stones, whoever expects to find great things, will probably be disappointed. The true "treasure" and the true beauty of this place is precisely the mysterious spirit that hovers in the air, among these trees, these ancient beech trees that perhaps have seen something, certainly know something, but jealously guard their secrets in silence. This is the true wealth of this place, the ancient and mysterious being, legendary land, battlefield for every fantasy, here you can breathe the scent of a history so ancient as to be inscrutable, it is a tension that hovers in the air.

It could be a place of energy, remember that the ancients did not randomly build their settlements, their fortresses and places of worship, but only where the planet emanates particular forces, where the border with other dimensions was more labile, where it was therefore possible to explore other realities and where energy flows flowed between Heaven and Earth.

On many geographical and road maps, until a few years ago, the presence of this phantom city was reported, immersed in nothingness, with no road connections, except a dirt road that is little more than a simple path. It is a very ancient archaeological site, a very ancient pre-Roman settlement, whose foundation is lost in the mists of time, perhaps a settlement of the ancient Ligurian Celts or more likely, according to the latest research, a Byzantine fort used in the war against the "barbarian" Goths. It seems that the place was not intended to host large military troops, so it is also conceivable that it was not built with strictly military purposes, while a small medieval castle, belonging to the Landi, existed in the village of Tosca, a few hundred meters further down the valley from this place. We read in a text published in the early seventeenth century: "There are the ruins of the City of Ombrìa, a mile around, you can still see the ruins of the walls of the houses on top of Mount Occa, there is a mountain called Barregaz, around which you can still see the moat, and trenches carved with stone, which is a sign of its antiquity, and a sign that the army that conquered the said City was housed there..." (from: Book of the copper description of the Imperial States and Feuds of Don Federico Landi - 1617)

Lost worlds always inflame the imagination of us humans, and in the absence of written documents and certain historical data, the fragmentary historical news mix with legends and popular tales, such as those that tell of a mysterious "maiden of the woods" or the more famous one that tells of priceless treasures that down here, somewhere, would be buried, a real city of gold, but be careful, like every buried treasure in this world, it is guarded and protected by spells and curses, if not by the Devil himself in person, willing to barter his riches with your soul! But if you think about it, if the devil is willing to spend so much for our souls, then it probably means that the real treasure is inside us, and not hidden in shiny underground pots!

The fabulous and bewitching charm of these ruins and these legendary riches have come a long way, the echo of this mythical treasure reached very distant lands, attracting adventurers of all sorts, already in a text of 1761 we read the following "... ruins of a large ruined continuous wall, which forms an oval of about 800 paces, towards morning you can see various small cavities and a hole made not long ago ..." and a popular nursery rhyme has been saying for time immemorial: "the City of Umbria lies buried, the greatest treasure in the world"!

All these adventurers, and more recently archaeologists and scholars, were not well regarded by the local populations, it also happened that, on the occasion of some natural disasters such as a bad harvest, the population held the scholars guilty of the disastrous events, caused by the excavations that would have uprooted the mandrake from the forest, a mythical root with known magical properties! The most famous and enterprising of these treasure hunters was the American Alexander Wolf, who settled in this valley in the nineteenth century, investing much of his wealth and energy in a vast excavation campaign. He was a tireless researcher who produced a large amount of data and, thanks to his work and the objects he collected, he was one of the promoters of the first civic museums in the history of our country.

There is a whole fascinating story of archaeology, folklore, nature and landscape in this beautiful mountain, well described and documented in this volume, very nice if you are interested in learning more about this little great adventure: