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The back roads of Sicily are roller coasters; circling boulders bigger than buildings, climbing up on spindly arches high above the ground. From time to time we would pull over the car to look at undecipherable signs written in fading Italian, pack the dog on my lap back in the car, and carry on down the road. The harder it was to get to the abandoned city, the more we wanted to find it. Finally, we turn a rolling bend and see Borgo Schiro, silhouetted against the barren fields. We rolled slowly onto the main street, out the back window fellow passengers lunged forward with their cameras, documenting our first glimpse of the long decrepit village. Perched on top of a small hillside like an empty shell, the town once had everything it could need. Various buildings; A post office, a pharmacy, even a miniature school surrounded a cream colored church. We took off in different directions, determined to explore every building and every inch of this surreal shell of a once-populated agricultural town. I climbed a crumbling staircase to find an apartment half open to the sky. Blue tiles still hung onto the kitchen counters, a pink mattress lay alone on the floorboards under the blown apart roof. Everywhere bits of color remained despite the ruin. Crumbling plaster littered the terrace as I stepped out, olive trees had invaded the tall skeletons of the room walls. Walking among the weeds, I could make out faded paintings on the walls of the school. "Classe del progetto artistico" but I couldn't make out the date. The mural depicted children painting pictures, reading, writing. The graffiti, itself an Italian invention, covering all of the walls was done in every color, but faded by time and the sun. Inside the church the bell tower still stood, we explored the hall. One of the Italian hipsters stood on the balcony, raised his arms up and started to sing, "Ave Maria!". All of us on the floor below laughed and joined in, dancing around in the light stealing through the shattered stained glass window, the sound of our voices filling the space and reverberating off the walls. As we had explored, the sun had sunk down until it was level with us on the hilltop. We converged in the courtyard outside, it was open to the fields expanding in every direction.The sunset threw gold between the columns and on our faces. I felt completely filled with light, like the empty buildings were filled with air.