Hands aren’t just for typing and texting, but for creating,” says Pasquale Marinelli, a bell artisan in Italy. Pasquale and his brother Armando are the 26th generation of a family who has been crafting handmade bells since the middle ages. Pouring scalding-hot liquid metal into carefully designed molds, the two sweat over glowing embers, working with 10 centuries worth of knowledge in order to spread a medieval chime around the world.

Naturally, such historical work is done in an ancient town called Agnone. Located in Italy’s isolated and rugged southern region of Molise, the quiet stone village lies squarely in a mountainous valley, where green hills roll into each other like waves and hay barrels freckle the land like drops of gold.