Although Calabria is a region overlooking two seas, which belong to a single large sea, the Mediterranean, it is also partly a mountainous land. A particular landscape variety, diversity and multiculturalism: these are the terms to which we must refer when talking about Calabria and the Mediterranean. Because after all, the Mediterranean is the duality of its own name, it finds its most true and intimate elements in plurality.
It is characteristic of the entire Mediterranean area to group together, and bring together, in combination and contrast, many aspects of reality. And this is even more true in a land like Calabria which represents a paradigm or rather a sort of microcosm of the Mediterranean, since it contains in itself a mixture of cultures, traditions and plurality of thoughts, in which it seems difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the individual contributions of the various cultures that belong to it (Greece, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, French, Bourbon kingdom).
Calabria, like the Mediterranean, is not one-dimensional, it is many things together, many elements of the complex intertwining of civilizations, cultures, religions, traditions and arts that have characterized its shores and its internal lands. And this variety, this diversity and this multiculturalism can also be found in food and wine, in agricultural products and in typical and traditional products.
Popular traditions reflect the historical, cultural and spiritual traits of an ethnic community and their knowledge contributes to solving the problems connected with the socio-economic development process of the communities concerned. This study intends to enhance the recovery of local traditions and therefore encourage a rediscovery of our roots and culture. To understand life, history and tradition of people, it is necessary to examine their rites, their daily life and to enter the villages of peasant work, where customs come from afar and contain characters of tradition and territoriality. Over the centuries, these old customs have transformed rites of life into what we can now call cultural resources.
Cultural itinerary of Calabria for the recovery of historical memory thus proves to be a fundamental tool for the knowledge of local culture by the younger generations and a tool to contribute to achieving the awareness of belonging to a universal community albeit with its own diversity. Knowledge of cultural diversity can be a keystone for the development of territory of Calabria and for the support of local arts and crafts as a career prospect.
It is our wish to help young people to rediscover their territory, to inspire them to love their origins and to guide them to traditional arts and crafts for individual, cultural, social and financial growth.
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