San Mango d'Aquino 
Italia

About SanMango.net

I have had the good fortune of visiting the beautiful and charming town of San Mango d'Aquino many times over the last three decades. Part of my ancestry originates from this town --virtually everyone in my mother's family tree is from San Mango d' Aquino and my paternal grandmother is also from San Mango d'Aquino.

When I built this site, there were no websites, that really captured the flavor or beauty of San Mango d'Aquino, its inhabitants or its visitors -- that was my initial objective -- to present San Mango the way that I saw it. I enlisted the aid of a good friend of mine, Angelo Orlando and a couple of new acquiantances, to show me some of the more significant locations of San Mango to photograph. I included many of those photos in this website.

When I launched the site in July 2003, it was mainly a pictorial, but Angelo began providing me with San Mango poetry, literature and other interesting materials that became the basis of the resources page. Later I added a message board, as well as a news section with stories provided by Giovambattista Caravia. Though unintended, the site began to serve as a type of portal. This function was beyond the original scope of the project. Several months after our launch it was a pleasure to see that a group of San Mango residents had gotten together to create their own portal site for San Mango -- sanmango.it, which features news and current events. In the coming months I discontinued the message boards because they were becoming more political. I also discontinued the news section since it was redundant and did not fit the objectives of the site, which was, and still is to present San Mango d'Aquino in the best possible light.

We have enjoyed extremely good search engine listings and our site has had hundreds of thousands of visits. We present a large selection of photographs featuring the traditional and characteristic activities that take place in San Mango. We also feature a very extensive library of Calabrese and San Mango dialect poetry, which has been collected by Angelo Orlando. In addition we have several links to San Mango d'Aquino emigrant resources -- most notably those provided by San Mango emigrants living in Winnipeg, Canada -- provided by Luigi Colosimo.

Because of its convenient access to the Autostrada, San Mango d'Aquino has become a very significant crossroads for its neighbors and development has followed. Once, just one among many quaint Italian villages crowning a small mountain, San Mango today is a cascade of new homes and commercial buildings filling in the expanse of land between its crown and the Autostrada below.

During my many trips, I have had the opportunity to meet and become friends with many individuals who have helped me to understand this town of my heritage better. My background in ancient, medieval and modern European history has proven useful for my personal research into this town and the Calabria region of Italy, however there are a couple of individuals who have made it possible for me to more fully comprehend the various historical, cultural and social aspects of this area -- most notably, the historian and author, Armando Orlando, and his brother Angelo Orlando -- they have been instrumental in this quest. Armando has written numerous books and articles regarding Calabrian history, as well as, the history of San Mango d'Aquino and other nearby communities, such as Falerna and Castiglione. Angelo Orlando has been tireless in his efforts to collect and catalog folklore, customs and religious traditions. He is responsible for the collection of dialect literature and poetry in the "Letteratura" (Resources) section of this website. We have, what I believe to be, one of the largest repositories of Calabrese / San Mango dialect literature on the web.

SanMango.net has been noted as an emigrant resource and our correspondence has indicated that many 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation San Mango d'Aquino descendants have found this site a useful and valuable resource, in their own search to discover their ancestry.



Official Golden Web Award Winner!

Built by G-site Web

- HOME -

San Mango d'Aquino, CZ, Italia
Email Click for info
© 2003 G-site Web