One hundred and twenty-one hectares on the hills of Calanna, facing the Strait. An Ecopark of centuries-old olive trees, woodland trails, dwellings among the trees.
Gaya sits on the hills of Calanna, in the province of Reggio Calabria, on the slopes of the Aspromonte. From here the eye falls on the Strait of Messina and, on clear days, on Etna smoking in the distance on one side, and on the Aeolian Islands on the other.
It is an Ecopark — a natural area managed sustainably, where environment, agriculture and human activity live together in balance. A composed landscape, where every zone has a name, a function, a figure who inhabits it.
Energy: 100% off-grid. The national grid hasn't reached us yet — we've turned the absence into a choice. 6 kW of photovoltaic with 15 kW of battery storage give us power, day and night. Solar thermal panels in every structure for hot water.
Three trails cross the Gaya estate. Together they form a trilogy: loss, thought, deep time.
Water, the little jungle, memory.
The trail begins at the fountain, an old restored washhouse. It descends into the little Calabrian jungle, an exceptional humid micro-climate of lianas and ferns, and reaches the spot where capelvenere grows — Adiantum capillus-veneris, an indicator of hidden water. It ends at The Place of Memory and Rebirth.
Contemplation, wonder, return.
The trail crosses the chestnut wood and then the pine wood, up to the Swing over the Infinite — an explicit nod to Leopardi's poem The Infinite. From there it descends to the Geo-Oasis, where an "aborted" geode was found — a crystal that didn't complete itself — and where we have planted over 300 trees. Loop back.
Deep time, the ancestral, the origin.
The trail enters the deep wood, reaching the natural waterfalls inside the estate. From there it leads to the spot where Woodwardia radicans grows, a relic palaeotropical fern that has survived through the geological eras — a protected species found in only a few places in southern Italy.
"A cultivated mandala. Twelve sectors, one for each zodiac sign, with the corresponding medicinal plants. Gaya's vegetables come from here."
In the summer of 2021 fire passed over these hills for three days. One hundred centuries-old olive trees, eighty hectares of woodland gone up in smoke. That's where the real work began — not mourning what had gone, but answering with the gesture of planting.
Five hundred and thirty trees planted: 200 olive trees, 60 figs, 50 ancient fruit trees, 30 oaks, 130 mixed trees including maples, lindens and others donated by Vivaio Mola della Badia, 60 forest species, plus hundreds of plants from the plantfunding campaign. We redrew the trails, built the Seed Temple where we keep the seeds of the plants that remain, and gathered the oldest olive trees destroyed by the fire in a clearing — The Place of Memory and Rebirth — so they would stay part of the landscape, and not only memory.
And this is only the beginning. By the end of 2027 we plan to plant another 1,500 trees.
"Loss is not made up for.
It is inhabited. What is lost becomes the shape of what remains."
"From Gaya's hills the eye reaches all the way to Etna."