I like to think of myself as a pretty smart guy. But after events of the last couple weeks, I’ve been forced to rethink the strength of my intellectual prowess.
That’s because I got fooled by an old looking three-thousand-pound carved rock head and face that looks like an erect penis pointing at labia if you turn your head sideways.
Now, I know what you’re saying:
“Take it easy Jake, people get fooled by these types of things all the time.”
That may be true. But still, I feel silly.
Anyway, this is how it happened.
We are expanding our tour offerings to include ebike trips through the mountains and hills around our town of Torre de’Passeri, Abruzzo. As part of planning a route, I was looking at Google Maps to see if there was anything near the roads we would be on worth a stop. And there it was.
Just outside the village of Corvara, Google told me there was an "Italic Sanctuary" site. There was even the little historical attraction icon Google puts on things like the Coloseum in Rome.
The thing is about four feet tall. It really looks wild.
Cool.
The Italics were a group of tribes that lived in parts of Italy before the Romans took over the peninsula. In the Abruzzo region, these tribes banded together to oppose Roman rule in the first few centuries B.C., including during what became known as the Social Wars. Google told me the “Italic Sanctuary” is smack in the middle of the Italic Vestini Tribal area. Relics, including the famous Warrior of Capestrano, have been found in the area. There are also Italic sites and archaeological digs too. (These are facts.)
So I hopped on my bike and went to the site. It sure looked old. There were some foundations still standing with entrance doors, stairs up to a platform, some old carvings depicting half bird, half dragon-like animals, a couple inscriptions, a couple pillars still standing and then the aforementioned giant head/penis.
I took and posted pictures of some of these “ruins” on our work and personal social media sites, and in the posts I labelled the ruins as Italic and at least 2000 years old.
The “likes” and “wow” comments rolled in fast.
Too fast.
People were astonished.
I started having doubts.
If these were truly Italic artifacts, especially the head, they would constitute a major archaeological find. Abruzzo is off the beaten track, but this was on Google Maps. If they were real, wouldn’t these things be in a museum? Then I looked at the pillars in the one photo. It looked like they were standing on a cement podium. Did they even have cement back then?
My sneaking suspicious turned to serious doubts when a retired ancient history professor and cousin of my wife’s sent a note.
“These don’t look ancient to me,” he said.
I engaged with him on some of the details. He said the inscriptions might be real, but the head looked medieval at best, and that he’d check with colleagues.
Then he said he thought all these things might be a joke because if you turn the rock head photo sideways – it looks like an erect penis pointing at a labia.
I turned the photo sideways and, yup, that’s what it looks like.
Hmm.
For any normal person, the jig should have been up here, but I’ve become acutely aware over the decades that I am not normal in several ways, including not giving up on hopeless causes when I should.
Instead of admitting I was mistaken, I blew by that red flag like it wasn’t even there.
I thought maybe the head is some kind of fertility god thing or symbolic sexy sign like in Pompeii where ancient erect penises carved on the streets point the way to brothels. (This is a fact.)
I visited the site a couple more times, even sometimes with guests on our ebikes. I found a few more “artifacts” and carvings. I went online and searched for anything about the site and came up with nothing.
Gulp.
Why was there almost nothing about this amazing place? That didn’t make sense.
Then the cousin got back. The consensus of his learned colleagues was – these are not Italic ruins.
Shit.
At that point, I knew I’d be writing this blog and correcting the post. I had just trusted Google Maps like a sucker, and to make matters worse, this was the second time in a few months I got fooled by Google Maps. You can read about the first time here - https://www.amazingabruzzotours.com/blog/2025/6/5/bad-judgement.
Still, I want to know why those things are there. What would possess someone to put these things at the base of a cliff near my town? It would have taken weeks to do this. That’s a lot of effort for a joke. All kinds of questions danced in my head, but one remained at the forefront:
Why is there a freaky looking giant rock head and face that looks like an erect penis pointing at a labia if you turn your head sideways just sitting beside a road in Abruzzo?
WTF is going on here?
Well … a couple days ago I got an answer. It came in the second part of a comment on the original post.
The first part of the post, written in Italian by somebody I don’t know, was a diatribe labelling me a lying, manipulative person with a serious lack of moral fibre intent on misleading people. He also compared me to turd floating in a toilet bowl. (The word is stronzo. You can look it up.)
Sheesh.
But then the second part:
“Everybody knows that stuff was part of a theatrical production installation done only a few years ago,” he said.
Bingo.
This makes sense. These things are theatrical props recreating some kind of Italic era site. They are sitting there because whoever did them just left them like discarded junk.
I’ve since tried to figure out exactly which production they were made for and when they were installed. Online searches are turning up movies shot in the area, but nothing with an Italic theme. I even asked the man who sent me the insulting, yet enlightening, note if he knew the name of production. He has not responded.
Still, I thought I’d better correct these matters sooner rather than later.
So here goes:
Attention please! I have three things to clarify:
1. The post I made on Facebook and Instagram on October 5, 2025 contained incorrect information. The “Italic ruins” I said were more than 2000 years old, are, in fact, theatrical props created and installed in the last few years.
2. I am not as smart as I thought I was.
3. Even though I am not as smart as I thought I was, I am not a turd floating in a toilet bowl.
Thanks,
Jake
