When the washing was done out of the house and stories were told to everyone.
Sadly, nothing is left today of the building or the walls of our old public wash-house.
An important piece of the history of San Vito Romano has disappeared: a place of work, of toil, of meeting and of everyday life that we can no longer visit, photograph or show to our children and grandchildren.
Or rather, we can no longer see it with our eyes.
Because the wash-house lives on in the memory of those who knew it.
And that is exactly why we must tell its story, while there are still people who can remember its shape, its sounds, its smells and its emotions.
A journey through memory
The wash-house was roofed and, to get in, you had to go through a large doorway.
Inside there were long rectangular basins, where the women washed the laundry standing opposite one another.
The water came from the fountains and, in the middle, was the clearest water, kept for the final rinse.
Hands worked, water flowed and voices wove together.
They talked about children, husbands, money troubles, everyday worries. They shared joys, hopes and confidences. And, of course, there was no shortage of gossip!
It was a community gathering around the basins, as the toil of the work mingled with the company.
And then there was that particular scent of home-made soap, made with ash, oil…, which still comes back in our memories today. A scent that perhaps resembled Marseille soap, but belonged to a world all our own.
The road to the wash-house
I still remember it: it was the very lane I walked as a child with my mother, the old Via del Piscarello.
An uphill path, made of sandstone slabs, uneven here and there, with brambles, wild blackberries and greenery growing along the sides.
There were horses, butterflies and the scents of the countryside.
I was little and I helped my mother, as other children of my age did, to carry the dirty laundry to the wash-house.
Back then I could not know that, many years later, I would try to rebuild that place through memories.
I never imagined that that simple road, walked together with her, would become an open door onto my childhood.
Before Facebook, there was San Vito Lavers!
Today we meet in virtual squares, through a screen.
Back then people met at the public wash-house.
News went round there, stories were told, advice was sought and problems and joys were shared. Every woman brought her own laundry, but also a part of her own life.
And so an idea came to me: to call this journey of ours through memory SAN VITO LAVERS, playing on the name of our beloved civic square, San Vito Lovers (in Italian, lavare means “to wash”).
One letter changes, but how much history comes out of it!
And speaking of laundry, allow me a joke.
People used to say that dirty linen should be washed at home. But in San Vito, at the public wash-house, it was washed out of the house, all together! 😄
Of course, it was not only about washing the linen. Life itself was shared.
❤️ Why must we tell this story?
Because a place may physically disappear, but that does not mean it should be erased from the history of a community.
We can still rebuild our wash-house through the memories of those who used it: its size, the basins, the water, the voices, the smells and the habits of those days.
We do not expect to rebuild everything in a day. We want to make a start, to listen and to gather testimonies, telling apart what we remember from what we will manage to document.
Perhaps we will never have our wash-house back, but we can at least leave young people the story of what it was.
Memory does not give back the lost stones, but it stops the story of those who lived among them from disappearing too.
And now it’s over to you!
Dear friends of San Vito Romano, which of you remembers the old public wash-house?
Who used to go there with their mother or grandmother? Who remembers the sound of the water, the scent of home-made soap, the basins and the women’s chatter?
Do you have photographs, stories or details that can help us rebuild this place?
Tell us in the comments. Even a small memory can help us recover a piece of our history.
Because this time we don’t just want to wash the laundry: we want to save the memories! ❤️
San Vito Lovers — Our square, our memory, our future.
The image is a reconstruction created with artificial intelligence.