Today’s S. Eufemia was born through land reclamation, and became a town in 1935. Upon completion of the drainage of the area, some small villages were built on clusters of houses that were already there, while the village of S. Eufemia itself was created in the neighborhood of the railway station. Such villages functioned as local centers to catalyze the rural repopulation of the area, and were set up as an essential beginning to the development of the plain. The new agricultural environment, that stemmed from the village that was situated at the center of the reclaimed Lamezian plain, was intended to play a role of primary importance in the “revolutionary” fascist policy that mixed populist tendencies with a belief in the superiority of the countryside in its interface with the urban world.

Railway Station of S.Eufemia and the first houses under construction. Storicitta Collection

Intended to function as “an outlet for the migration of surrounding towns of the Apennine Mountains,” the town was intended to be the “center of all agricultural industries required by the vast and extremely fertile expanse now endowed with water for irrigation.”

Back .....................Next