The Atlas of the Mysterious Places of Italy

I'm proud to present the fruit of a year of sweat, studies and hard work. These are the illustrations of the "Atlas of the Mysterious Places of Italy", published by Bompiani. Me and Massimo Polidoro have worked intensively to this collection of magical places, mysterious legends or unexplained facts.
We have explored a forgotten and hidden part of Italy. Welcome to those places made of a thousands strange legends

The submerged ancient village of Curon in Trentino Alto Adige (Südtirol)

On May 1, 1968, an Italian engineer, Giorgio Rosa, proclaimed the independence of the "Republic of Rose Island" or "Esperanta Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj", as the new micro-nation was called in Esperanto.

The Sacro Bosco ("Sacred Grove"), colloquially called Park of the Monsters (Lazio)

The Rogues of the Toro river

Triora: the Italian Salem (Liguria)

Castel del Monte: "Castle of the Mountain" (Puglia)

The massacre of Pentedattilo (Calabria)

The Cappella Sansevero and the "body petrification" (Campania)

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (Sicilia)

Tavolara: The World's smallest Kingdom (Sardegna)

Sanctuary of Santa Maria infra Saxa (Marche)

Dracula's graveyard in Naples (Campania)

Colobraro: the village without name (Basilicata)

The monster of Po river. A mysterious amphibious creature wanders among the rushes of the mouth of the river...

The Tatzelwurm of the Alps: a lizard-like creature, often described as having the face of a cat, with a serpent-like body which may be slender or stubby, with four short legs or two forelegs.

The Vie Cave are an impressive road network linking an Etruscan necropolis and several settlements in the area between Sovana, Sorano and Pitigliano, consisting mainly of trenches excavated as nearly vertical cliffs in tuff, sometimes over twenty feet high.

Poveglia. In 1793, there were several cases of the plague on two ships, so the island of Poveglia was transformed into a confinement station for the plague (lazaretto).

The Pozzo di San Patrizio "St. Patrick's Well", Orvieto (Umbria)

The "Fascist UFO Files" which dealt with a flying saucer that had crashed near Milan in 1933 (some 14 years before the Roswell, New Mexico crash), and of the subsequent investigation by a never mentioned before Cabinet RS/33, that allegedly was authorized by Benito Mussolini, and headed by the Nobel scientist Guglielmo Marconi.

The Alchemical Door in Rome

Villa Palagonia: "The Villa of Monsters" (Sicilia)

Consonno: the Italian (abandoned) Las Vegas (Lombardia)

Ponte della Maddalena is a bridge crossing the Serchio river near the town of Borgo a Mozzano in the Italian province of Lucca. It's known as Ponte del Diavolo, the "Bridge of the Devil"

The pirates of the Lake Maggiore

The Sacra di San Michele, sometimes known as Saint Michael's Abbey, is a religious complex on Mount Pirchiriano, situated on the south side of the Val di Susa in the territory of the municipality of Sant'Ambrogio di Torino, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. The abbey, which for much of its history came under Benedictine rule, is now entrusted to the Rosminians.