“Protect and enhance our traditions, our excellence, our identity. I had the enormous pleasure of getting to know up close the activity of the charcoal burners of Serra San Bruno, a hard-working community that for centuries has produced the coal that goes to Italy and Europe, passing down this centuries-old art from generation to generation. Within an evocative environment almost like being on a film set, I discovered an extraordinary activity that must absolutely be safeguarded a motion that commits the Council to take action to promote every useful action for the purpose of recognizing the art of the “Carbonai” of Serra San Bruno as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, since it is a profession recreated by communities and groups in close correlation with the surrounding environment and its history”. The regional councilor stated this in a note Ernesto Francesco Alecci
“Responding to the invitation of Valeria, Luca and many other friends of Serra San Bruno, I went to the woods where coal is produced – he continued – through hard and meticulous work that goes on 12 months a year and which creates a This is a fundamental economy for this territory. Through the collection of wooden logs and their precise placement, the “scarazzi” are created, almost small “volcanoes”, which can reach a height of 6 meters within which the production will take place. finally the coal, thanks to constantly controlled combustion to prevent the wood from turning into ash. With skilful steps, handed down over the centuries, at the end of the work the charcoal burners obtain a quantity of coal equal to approximately one fifth of the wood introduced”.
“Even today, being able to witness this process is an exciting spectacle. One of the rare cases – concluded Alecci – of “industrial archaeology” still in activity which certainly deserves to be protected and valorised, also through guided tours with schools and university or through tourist routes. My motion in the Council has precisely this objective. Calabria, in its intriguing diversity, hides a thousand treasures, we have the duty to protect them, enhance them and make them known to the world”.