I'm opening this thread to keep you updated on what's going on here....
As I wrote elsewhere, my house is in a good shape and I'm hosting a family of friends who've been forced to leave their house because it had been damaged by the earthquake.
All is good for me and my relatives.
Not the same for some other friends of mine.

Now this is Cessapalombo, a mere 45 minutes driving from my house:


Nevermind the castle, it was alredy ruined.
But the wall of the church you see in the lower side of the first picture fell down beacuse of the heartquake, and all the (few) medieval houses at the feet of the castle fell down, except for a renaissance palace.
Luckily this tiny village was almost abandoned, only 2 families (of 80 years old ppl!) lived there and were succesfully rescued by the army.

Cessapalombo is the most important part of a medieval context for which I spent 5 years doing archaeological surveys on the territory.
Apart for the major success of the surveys (more than 60.000 fragments of archaeological items found, dating from the Paleolithic to yesterday, 34 castles found, 1 Iron Age settlement+necropolis found, 1 Lombard necropolis, 1 church) I am bound to this place because this is where I learnt all the small tips and hacks to live outdoor.
This is where I first saw wild wolves and Ulisse, the bear living free in this national park.

The castle of Cessapalombo dominates 3 other tiny villages: Tribbio, Villa and Valle and I had a lot of friends there.
This is the house of one of them (built on the remains of a Roma villa!):


Those places are almost abandoned.
There are no schools, no hospitals, no nothing, and about 50 people lives there.
They HAVE to rely on tourism and on their cultural heritage (other than the interesting history, they also make a great red wine here) and on the beauty of their territory (it is well-known by bikers which often come to race between the beautiful woods in summer).

Now that the heartquake forced practically everybody to flee, I really have no idea when, if and how these places will eventually be visited by tourists again.
It really hurts me to see such an important piece of my youth reduced to this 

Italy is famous for Rome, but I always found the countryside much more interesting.  There are houses that are hundreds and hundreds of years old with people still living in them.  Old castles are on every peak or ridge line, and every one of them has a story. 

And while there are lots of towns and farms and fields, there are still deep forests where very few people actually go.  They are still wild and they scare most modern people.

Thank you all guys <3
Snow has started to melt and the family I hosted left my house today to retourn to theirs, in order to start working again next week.
Bill you're right, there're still woods that scare people nowadays - the park I live in is very small by American standards, a mere 60 square kilometers, still people get lost there and a speleologist once died exploring an underground Roman aqueduct running there!
But I really want to visit the USA, I would really love to stay there some months and try to understand how is life in the huge towns, in the small inland villages and exploring the wilderness... it's a marvelous country in my mind!