Fantino (San Giovanni in Fiore)

Fantino is a frazione of the comune of San Giovanni in Fiore, in the province of Cosenza.

Once very populous (it was the largest hamlet of the Sila town), it has been emptying since the 1980s. Halfway between San Giovanni in Fiore and Caccuri, it overlooks the whole Carello valley (the upper Val di Neto) and faces the Ionian Sea. Its historic centre has buildings in local stone and narrow alleys.

Fantino's population grew almost continuously, peaking in the 1960s at 800 inhabitants, enough to make it a real, economically independent and self-sufficient village. Yet despite good access via the SP213 and room to grow, around the 1980s it began to empty: in the 1990s there were about 200 inhabitants, and in 2001 just 29, mostly elderly.

Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · translated from Italian