As the Trappeto – whose life as a lately inhabited district of Montecalvo is shown in this photo exhibition – has never been an object of accurate studies locally researched, it is, we think, highly advisable to extend to it the information palaeontologists, anthropologists and historians have dedicated to the ancient grotto homes, like those of the Trappeto, which are to be found in numerous countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
It’s highly probable that these habitations trace back their origins to the VI Millennium B.C. (The Neolithic). So, we can say that since that age these grottos have been used by man for several different ends, and in some special cases for human habitation at various intervals since then. In this case of the Trappeto we are only sure that its grottoes have been lately inhabited until the Eighties of the last century, but cannot exclude that human habitation has been a continuous use since very ancient times.
These photos show some of these inhabitants while performing menial home tasks, probably still unaware that those works were the last ones to be done there.
The homes of this ancient district their forefathers excavated in the mountainside , and the Trappeto was till its end the innermost core of Montecalvo community. Its inhabitants were destitute people who only today the other fellow countrymen have acknowledged as the most patient, strong willed and brave citizens of the entire township. It’s a pity, but today they live largely spread out in distant foreign