MEET US

Our story begins long before FabbrIDeA, in 1981, when the strength and the determination of a young woman, Maria Palermo, and her husband, Nicola Caruso, drive them to leave Australia and to come back to their homeland Calabria.
Four children, a wealth of artisanal experience and a big dream: they wanted to create a production holding, to give a future for their children, to help develop their homeland! The “Palermo Ferrobattuto” was born in Francavilla Angitola, as a little workshop equipped to produce metal windows and doors and wrought iron items.
Experience, effort and passion: every year the company grows, the amount of work increases, the professionalism reaches ever higher quality standards.
Innovation, advanced pieces of equipment, “made in Italy” as fundamental objectives to pursue and defend: Vincenzo and his siblings believe it more and more. The right way is betting on the product design, the use of new digital technologies; combine the culture of doing and design with the creativity of the craftsman and his manual skills, and with the designer’s aesthetic and functional vision.
The “Palermo Ferrobattuto” starts a new path, developes a new business model and a web-based system, betting on the customization of the product: “You invent, we make!”. The rest is FabbrIDeA.

Francavilla Angitola is our home, which Maria and Nicola preferred to Australia and which we love as a gem.
Its foundation dates back to the Byzantine era, between the Ninth and the Tenth Century, as a walled fortress. Its later story is similar to the story of the Southern Italy, connected to the seasons of the important aristocratic families and to the changing fortunes of the monastic orders. Today it is a little town with about 2000 inhabitants, along a rocky ridge, overlooking the Gulf of Lamezia Terme.
But its true richness over the century has been, and remains today, the manual skill of the inhabitants: the craftsmanship of Francavilla used to concern not only the manufacture of iron, but also the production of baskets and chairs, the embroidery, the leather and the breeding of silkworms, an important resource for the entire territory.
The economic boom and the emigration reduced these millennial arts, that however, today, are still alive thanks to people like Maria and Nicola who strongly believed and believe in a conscious recovery of this glorious past in the future.

A prince and a fairy, unhappy lovers, victims of the anger of the Lord of the Fate, were transformed by him into a dragon and a golden goose. The sacrifice of the Prince Rotilio and her wife Angitola couldn’t save them from their lot, but Jupiter, in an act of compassion, joined them for all eternity
History and legend, love and spell, fate and divinity. The legend of the Dragon and the Hen is known in every corner, house, cave in Francavilla Angitola. In the Dragon river lies and flows the past, the present and the future of the town.
The Dragon is the starting point of the “Palermo Ferrobattuto” company and the inspiration for the FabbrIDeA renovation. The fire of the Dragon forged the steel, warmed the emotions, enhancing the will to grow a company, a unique project, in order to keep a thousand-year tradition and a story yet to be written.