Irone

Irone (or Iròn) is a village in the Valli Giudicarie, province of Trento, known as a ghost village because it was abandoned after the plague that swept across Europe in the 1600s.

About 5 km from Ragoli, in the comune of Tre Ville, at 871 m, Irone lies in a hollow at the foot of Mount Iron (1874 m), isolated and hidden by thick vegetation. The village has kept its traditional layout, even though many Alpine elements were added to its structure and to the architecture of its houses.

The origin of the name Irone (Iròn in local dialect) is uncertain; it may be linked to the heron (airone), the animal on the coat of arms of the Stefanini Di Tione family, who lived in the village.

In the Middle Ages Irone was part of the old community of Preore, divided into eleven "ville". Thanks to a particularly mild climate, it always lived on farming and fruit growing.

«The traces of past, intensive farming can be seen in the outlines of the terraces and in the country lanes edged with rough granite slabs», writes Aldo Gorfer. Although little is known about the village, it certainly began to empty from the late 1400s and was left completely uninhabited after the wave of plague in the 1600s.

Like Ragoli and the other villages of the Giudicarie, Irone was hit by the plague that struck Europe between 1629 and 1636, the one described by Manzoni.

The effects of the plague in the Giudicarie are documented by Guido Boni in La peste nelle Giudicarie (1922) and by Paolino Scalfi in the first volume of Preore in Giudicarie.

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