Campodimele : The Village

The name Campodimele derives from the ancient name campus mellis, which in Latin means field of honey. The village was once known for the production of honey. Campodimele is mentioned in several historical documents naming this corner of the Aurunci Mountains with names such as Campu de Mele and Compo di Fiori meaning also flowers’ field. The natural environment around the village seems to wrap it with its beauty.

             The Village

The village is right in the heart of the northern area of the Aurunci Mountains Natural Park. With peaks up to 1500 mt Campodimele sits among the park’s internal mountains and valleys where there are suggestive landscapes. Here the mountains offer a lot to discover with rural landscapes of limestone erosion, covered with wood much greener and dense woods than on the southern slopes.

Excursionists can enjoy different botanical treasures with approximately 1700 co-existing among which 50 types of wild orchids and also interesting wildlife like the elusive wild cat and recently the wolf. With over 121 species of birds, some very rare in Italy, the Aurunci Mountains have beautiful landscapes for birdwatchers trekking or riding horses and camping in this territories.

The park is an attempt to preserve the ruts of the rural cultures of small communities preserved by wilderness and centuries of isolation among internal valleys and hills. A sort of timeless reality suspended between clear blue skies, clouds, rain, snow, and sunny, dry hot summers when the sun is really hot. The beauty of a typical Mediterranean summer offers long, hot, bright days. Forgotten castles, old churches and monasteries, windmills and ancient hillside villages like Campodimele are enclosed in these green mountains and valleys. Winter time can be harsh and cold. A writer described the winter here as “that wind that descend with fury of a wolf in the cellars, with its whimpering voices breaks into every fissure and rolling through corridors comes in by the doors and starts whishing desperately: when it stops it’s only silence after the fall: an escape.

These words were from poet Libero De Libero who describing Campodimele said “Who stays in the village absorb the grass taste and smells like it through his own skin, hair, mouth and therefore once he’s far away exhales memories of that place as an odorous breath”, This village was a natural stronghold of shepherds and woodsmen in ancient times. Campodimele has a round, compact structure, the highest point of which is the bell tower of the parish church. The houses seem to roll peacefully downhill, creating a cone-shaped structure with ancient rural defense walls at its base.

Campodimele maintains its old medieval character, with squares fronted by typical stone houses, many of which still not much altered by modern changes. One's enchantment grows when venturing into the streets of the village, where the white and grey of the cobbled streets and the shapes and stones of the building fronts transmits a feeling of peace lost elsewhere. Tiny squares not much bigger than a small garden where the traveler finds old olive mills and ancient door gates of stone houses with fireplaces recall the small and simple world of times gone by.

The strong rural walls were part of an intense work of fortification occurred in the 11th century. They are a bastion and lookout over the Valle del Liri road under the hill. The path running along the walls offers a pleasant, panoramic walk with a complete view of the pre-Apennine mountains and the long and narrow valley of hundreds green fields. The traveler leaves Campodimele and can’t forget he just that feeling of having walked through and discovered a door to a forgotten world where reality is sometimes timeless.