A legend steeped in mystery lies in the village’s stone heart. Ancient tales tell of a wizard who lived here from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. He was so famous that he attracted “customers” from many towns, people who wished to discover the secrets hidden in his arcane incantations. The man was famous for a magic book, the source of all his knowledge, that he kept jealously hidden. His growing popularity worried the village priest who saw that fewer and fewer people were sitting on his church pews. Determined to put an end to this cult, the priest reported the wizard to the authorities. On the day that the military police came to arrest him, in a gesture of desperate defiance, Peppe walled up the precious book in his home. When leaving the house, he tripped and fell onto a marble slab, which split open when his body hit it. The mark can still be seen on the stone. The cart, that was about to take the wizard away to the prison in the outskirts of the town, came to a stop: the horses froze, and it was impossible to get them to move. That was right in front of the priest’s house. So Peppe, with a final defiant look, cast a spell on the priest’s family, tying their fate to his own for ever. After this, the horses resumed their journey as if nothing had happened.
