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here is a mixture of opposite emotions and chromatic contrasts . This region , peninsula within a peninsula , is like a mountain planted in the middle of Mediterranean , the Aspromonte Range , end of the line of the Apennine , dissecting the whole nation from north to south .
This play of geological fractals affects every village in this range , where they are perched on peaks like eagle ’ s nest , chosen by the ancient founders to escape invaders that ravaged the coast . The landscape is shaped by the rhythm of nature where the streams found their way to the sea and over thousands of years gouged the mountains , a small rivulet in summer , a raging torrent in winter , violently changing the Earth ’ s surface albeit as if in slow motion . Alexandre Dumas described Calabria as “ the God ’ s kaleidoscope ” due to earthquakes , floods and landslides that constantly forced the inhabitants to adapt and often restart from scratch . Edward Lear , the first Englishman to venture into Aspromonte at the time of the Grand Tours , sketched these villages made of poor houses clinging onto the rocks , he was enchanted by man ’ s desperate attempt to build houses onto crumbling soil . The complicated expanse of ramps and stairsteps within a Tetrislike embedded volumes , surely impressed Cornelius Escher who visited these villages in 1930 , taking inspiration for his famous prospective illusions . Looking at drawings by Lear and Escher little seems to have changed . The new building material of choice is whose use is unanimously considered the reason of a coastal and rural landscape mess . But architecture , as landscape , is a direct expression of cultural and economic condition of the people living in a territory ; the
southern unfinished buildings , with their declination of hollow brick , aluminium windows and steel rods on roofs has the same linguistic value of Patagonia ’ s wooden houses , adobe in the Atacama Desert and the raw bricks villages of the Pamirs . It all equally surprises travellers .
Asphalt came to the roads too , although very much later than the rest of Italy . Secondary roads spreading from the SS106 to the hinterland started their path along rivers then rose up quickly with windy and often steep pace . The repeated sharp turns wind their way along collapsed ridges whose rubble scatter across the patched asphalt , while the view alternatively closes in a turn , opening soon after on a rocky valley with indefinite end , where sunburst plains change quickly to a conifers forest . Here you must drive slowly with an eye on the landscape , paying attention to avoid holes and
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