Sunken 13th-Century Medieval Village Submerged in Italian Lake Will Reemerge in 2021

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While the search for the mythical underground city of Atlantis has yet to bear fruit, a very real medieval Italian village known as Fabbriche di Careggine has emerged from a lake after being submerged many decades ago.

A hydroelectric dam was built by the Italian energy company ENEL in the 1940s. That caused the waters to rise and artificially created Lake Vagli, which eventually covered over the 13th-century village Fabbriche di Careggine. According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, the village has emerged since then—the last time being in 1994 when the lake was emptied to do maintenance on the dam.

Now, the lost village surrounded by the Apuan Alps will emerge again in 2021, Lorenza Giorgi, the daughter of a nearby municipality’s former mayor, announced in a Facebook post.

Lorenza’s father, Ilio Domenico Giorgi, had once been the mayor of Vagli di Sotto, the town where the residents of the sunken village were moved to. The last time that ENEL drained the lake was in 1994, and the former mayor had helped organize visits from a million tourists over the course of a summer.

Vagli Sotto landscape view with dam on Lago ie Lake Vagli, Garfagnana, Italy. Sarah2/Shutterstock

Lorenza also noted that she got confirmation from ENEL that 2021 would be the next draining of the lake and thus the next chance to see the abandoned village up close without having to don scuba gear.

For this remote region of Italy, a large number of visitors to the sunken village would be a huge boon for the economy. “I hope that next year, strong of the past experience of which everyone has a beautiful memory and with the help of social networks, we will be able to repeat and overcome the great success, with just as much attention,” Lorenza wrote.

After her post piqued interest from would-be visitors of the underwater village, ENEL gave an update of a memorandum of understanding it was drafting with the Municipality of Vagli di Sotto.

Among the initial proposals considered for the opening of the site were indoor digital museums, museums featuring local history, and developing the natural environment, including the cleaning of the Vagli reservoir.

Fabbriche di Careggine Public Domain

So, what can visitors see once the village reemerges? The most famous monument is the church of San Teodoro, complete with an intact square-shaped bell tower and domed roof. The village was founded by blacksmiths and prospered until the mining of marble in neighboring valleys became the dominant industry.

Within a year, however, the village will perhaps recover much of its splendor and garner plenty of attention, especially as no one knows how long it will remain above water.