We publish the speech by Fabio Santavicca, mayor of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, in Abruzzo, where the free hotspots have been activated and in addition to the Municipalities that have joined the WiFi Italy Project.
The town was built between the 11th and 12th centuries on the ruins of a pago called Sextantio, from the Latin "Sextantia", indicating the distance of six Roman miles from Peltuinum, an important crossroads for traffic that reached the Adriatic coast from Rome and with the Tratturo regio, the main road of the transhumance connection between L'Aquila and Foggia.
In the thirteenth century it belonged to the Barony of Carapelle, later becoming a possession of the Piccolomini and then, from the end of the sixteenth century, of the powerful Medici family. It was under the guidance of Francesco de 'Medici that the village experienced its heyday, around the trade of "carfagna" wool, a raw black wool mainly used for military uniforms and for the monks' habit, in Santo Stefano and worked in Florence.
In the 18th century, the village entered the orbit of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and became a private possession of the King of Naples until the unification of Italy; later, with the privatization of the Tavolieri delle Puglie, the millennial activity of transhumance ends and a process of decline of the village begins. But the sad reality of the depopulation of the village has also had a positive result because even today, walking in the narrow alleys you can admire one of the most beautiful villages in Italy.
The serious health emergency that is affecting our country and the whole world is a situation that we never thought we would experience.
Already the terrible earthquake of 2009 has strongly tried our lives; after 11 years the wounds are still indelible in our souls, but despite everything we managed to get up again. we have to let this get us down.
We are strong people, we are mountain people who do not give up easily.
Through the infrastructure of the internet fiber our internal areas are now connected with the world, thanks to Infratel which in collaboration with the Ministry of Development has given birth to this project. The connection in the two focal points of the Borgo allows those who come back even just for a weekend and all the thousands of visitors to discover our small crib, to connect, update themselves with the outside world.
From here we will start again to return to value our origins, to seek a new and deeper human dimension in order to improve the livability of our territory, but above all of our lives.
A rediscovered and renewed presence in our beloved places that have been abandoned and depopulated for too long is desirable, we must continue to enhance them, make them livable as much as possible also through the implementation of technological interventions that can improve their human dimension.
