Fifty years ago a major earthquake destroyed most of the villages in the Belice valley in southwestern Sicily. In some villages a few houses have been reconstructed for some inhabitants to return, but even today large parts of these villages are still in ruins and mostly deserted, so they appear like ghost towns. Some other villages have been relocated to another place nearby and newly rebuilt from scratch in a postmodern or brutalist design, but they often remain unfinished. Over the years their unneighbourly habitats have also been deserted particularly by the younger generation and they thus equally appear like ghost towns of a different kind.
