It all happened in 1887: on Ash Wednesday the hills surrounding San Remo were shaken by a tremendous earthquake.
Bussana, an ancient village built near the Town of Flowers, was completely destroyed. Its houses, which had been built around a castle, were severely damaged: many of them crumbled; other were irreparably damaged. Its surviving inhabitants lived for some time in makeshift dwelling places, but then they decided to leave the village - this was also due to the fact that access to the village was impossible. As years went by, the ruins were covered by a thick vegetation. Bussana remained a dead village until the 1960s when a Piedmontese artist - Clizia - settled here and founded a circle of artists.
So Bussana began to live again: craftsmen and artists coming from Italy and Europe started to restore its houses and streets, though respecting its original Medieval structure based on narrow and winding alleys and houses built with stones and bricks. In fact they used the very same tiles, stones, and bricks that could be found among the ruins of the village. The large windows of its workshops and houses are the fruits of the restorers' originality: when the cracks were to big to be fixed, they simply inserted a sheet of glass.
Nowadays Bussana Vecchia is a very original village: here you can find every type of craftsmen's and artists' workshops, ranging from goldsmith's to designer's or botanist's. The village has been literally reborn and every year its peculiar atmosphere attracts thousands of tourists, who are eager to find out what spell seems to hover above this Medieval village.
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