La Casa con gli Occhi (Casa del Malocchio)

Great

Characteristic construction of the place, tradition has it that these houses had the appearance of the human face to keep evil spirits away

Strange medieval building, whose "human" features (the features of a face are perfectly recognizable in the front of the building) in the past were believed to be able to ward off the evil eye and evil spirits.

Aliano (MT) - Carlo LeviCarlo Levi was born in Turin on November 29, 1902, he spent his adolescence and youth there. Close friend of Pietro Gobetti and of the young people who around the "Liberal Revolution" were discovering together themselves and the fundamental problems of freedom of Italian life. He graduated in medicine at the age of twenty-two in the same year in which he exhibited his paintings of expressionistic tendency for the first time at the Venice Biennale and participated in the first resistance groups against fascism. He was one of the group of six painters from Turin who, against the servile rhetoric of official art, the false modernity of futurism and the conformism of the twentieth century, attributed to painting the value of expression of freedom. He gave birth to the first clandestine organizations and was the founder of "Justice and Freedom". In May 1935, on the eve of the war against Ethiopia, numerous arrests were made in the ranks of "Justice and Freedom", among the Turinese, in particular Vittorio Foa, Michele Giua and Massimo Mila. Carlo Levi himself, Franco Antonicelli and Cesare Pavese were stopped as supporters. On 15 July the Provincial Commission for the confinement of Rome, having received the report from the Police Headquarters, decided to assign Carlo Levi to the confinement of the police for three years "Since he is dangerous for the national order for having carried out ... political activity that could harm the interests national ". The Appeals Commission definitively rejected his request. On July 15, the Royal Prefecture of Rome ordered his assignment to the confinement that he should have served in GRASSANO in Basilicata. As Grassano was not considered sufficiently safe due to the proximity of the railway yard, on the proposal of the Prefect of Matera, the artist was transferred to ALIANO, a small town almost inaccessible at that time, due to the lack of communication routes. Aliano (MT) - Carlo Levi The experience made in that short period brought about a turning point in his life, as Carlo Levi himself wrote in the preface letter to the second edition of his most famous novel: "CHRIST HAS STOPPED AT EBOLI" The book has been an extraordinary success, has been translated into many languages ​​from China to France, from the United States to the Soviet Union, from Iceland to Greece, to England, from Japan to Latin America, and has held a role of foreground in the history of Basilicata because when it came out in 1945, it aroused the interest of intellectuals, artists, politicians, so much so that all public opinion was sensitized to the serious socio-economic problems of the region. In 1939 he expatriated to France, in 1941 he returned to Italy and in 1943 he was arrested again. The fifties are notable for the intense and fruitful literary activity that led to the publication of significant works such as "The clock", "The words are stones", "The future has an ancient heart", "The double night of the lime trees" . In 1963 the writer was elected senator of the Republic and continued his extraordinary activity as a painter, testified by numerous works and exhibitions in Italy and abroad. He died in Rome on January 4, 1975; he is buried in Aliano, the town that was brought to world attention by his most famous and authentic book. The book that, in this program is the fundamental inspiration of the project, was written in Florence from Christmas 1943 to the end of July 1944 in the most dramatic moment of the war when the clandestine closure and the presence of death, brought the author back to to relive once again those fundamental human values ​​that he had found in the years of his confinement in ALIANO.