Villaggi Schisina

The Villaggi Schisina are the only frazione of Francavilla di Sicilia. They were built by the Sicilian Region in 1950 on state road 185 of Sella Mandrazzi, as homes for the farmers who were given the surrounding land from former large estates. The seven small settlements are: Schisina, Borgo San Giovanni, Bucceri-Monastero, Pietra Pizzuta, Malfìtana, Piano Torre and Morfia. Today they lie abandoned.

In 1950, at the time of the land reform in Sicily, the Agency for Land Reform in Sicily (Eras) was created.

The aim was to expropriate the old large estates and assign them to farmers, who could buy the land through low, deferred payments and also receive regional funding.

There were incentives for owners who voluntarily offered their land for sale. Countess Maria Maiorca Mortillaro sold 748 hectares of her estate between Novara di Sicilia and Francavilla di Sicilia for 22,800,000 lire (1950 value). The work was carried out by the construction company of the engineer Rosario Arcovito of Messina, at a cost of just under a billion lire.

The seven villages were organised like this: Borgo Schisina was the central village, the prettiest, the pride of Eras and the administrative centre of the whole mountain organisation.

The others were micro-communities of very small brick houses built on the various terraces of the land.

Their names: Borgo San Giovanni, Bucceri-Monastero, Pietra Pizzuta, Malfìtana, Piano Torre and Morfia.

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