Loop from Lamezia Terme

01 Museum

Chiesetta di Piedigrotta

Step into this church carved straight into the tuff, beside the beach at Pizzo, where three generations of the Barone family cut statues and reliefs into the rock. Angelo enlarged the grotto until his death in 1915, and his son Alfonso carried on the work. In 1969, Giorgio added John Fitzgerald Kennedy and John XXIII in medallions.

02 Museum

Castello Murat

Rising sheer above the sea, the castle of Pizzo grew up around an Angevin watchtower. Through its rooms, follow the last days of Joachim Murat, who landed in the little harbour on 8 October 1815 to reconquer Naples. Arrested by the gendarmes, he was shot here on 13 October, refusing the blindfold.

03 Archaeology

Grotte Zungri

Zungri's Città di Pietra brings together, over some 3000 square metres, dozens of units carved into the rock or built against it. Among them you can make out dwellings, animal shelters and places devoted to wine, lime and grain. Its oldest traces appear to date from the 8th to the 12th century.

04 Village

Tropea

Tropea built its old centre on the edge of a cliff some sixty metres high, in the heart of the Costa degli Dei. The Norman cathedral displays two bombs dropped in 1943 that never exploded, as well as a black crucifix. Look at the sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Isola crowning its promontory, once cut off from the mainland.

05 Church

Santuario di Santa Maria dell'Isola

Perched on a sandstone rock once surrounded by the sea, the church sheltered hermits and Byzantine monks, then Benedictines from the 11th century. After the earthquake of 1905, it was given a symmetrical portico, a central bell tower and pinnacles. Climb the staircase laid out around 1810, then turn round to face the sea.

06 Monument

Capo Vaticano Lighthouse

Faro di Capo Vaticano

After dark, watch for the four white flashes this lighthouse sends out every 20 seconds over the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its short 8-metre tower crowns a white keeper's house, perched on the steep spur of Capo Vaticano, between the gulfs of Sant'Eufemia and Gioia Tauro. Built in 1870, it was not lit until 1885.

07 Mountain

Monte Sant'Elia

Climb up to the railed balconies clinging to the ridges of Monte Sant'Elia, above Palmi. The view sweeps from Capo Vaticano to the Strait of Messina, with the Aeolian Islands offshore and Etna in the distance. On the summit, three white crosses and a church from 1958 stand on ground devoted to worship since the year 884.

08 Heritage

Chianalea di Scilla

09 Castle

Castello Ruffo

Between the beaches of Marina Grande and Chianalea, this rock fortified by Anaxilas against Etruscan pirates guards the Strait of Messina. Spot the Marina Militare lighthouse, tucked into its upper part since 1913. Bought in 1543 by Paolo Ruffo, whose name it bears, the castle suffered heavily in the earthquakes of 1783 and 1908.

10 Museum

Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia

Museo archeologico nazionale di Reggio Calabria

Here you'll find the Riace Bronzes, two large original Greek statues from the mid-5th century BC, recovered from the sea and exceptionally well preserved. Marcello Piacentini's palazzo houses them, its façade punctuated by large medallions based on the coins of Magna Graecia. The museum also displays the head of the Porticello Philosopher, a rare Greek portrait.

11 Heritage

Lungomare Falcomatà

Some 1.7 kilometres long, the promenade of Reggio Calabria follows the Strait of Messina, between Art Nouveau palaces and the sea. Along it, come across century-old ficus trees, stretches of Greek walls and Roman baths. Opposite, across the strait, the Sicilian coast takes shape.

12 Mountain

Pentedattilo

Above the village of Pentedattilo rises a five-fingered hand of stone, from which the rock takes its Greek name. This 454-metre conglomerate, sculpted by erosion, can be seen from the Ionian Sea some 4 kilometres away. Rockfalls have blurred some of the fingers, but the silhouette remains striking as you approach.

13 Archaeology

Epizephyrian Locris

Locri Epizefiri

Greeks from Locris founded a city here in the 7th century BC, facing the Ionian Sea. Persephone reigned over its religious life, and her worshippers left moulded terracotta tablets in her sanctuary. Among the ruins, you can trace the city which, allied with Reggio, defeated Croton on the Sagra.

14 Village

Gerace

Gerace was born when the people of Locri abandoned the coast, from the 7th century onwards, for this sandstone rock at 500 metres. In the cathedral, count twenty reused columns between three naves. Further on, San Giovannello, built around the 10th century, keeps a gabled roof and a bell gable.

15 Archaeology

Caulonia

Kaulon

Near Punta Stilo, the Greeks of Kaulon raised a Doric temple whose foundations are still visible. In front of the temple, picture the districts once inhabited that the sea now covers. Identified by Paolo Orsi in 1891, the site yielded the mosaic of a sea dragon, which has become the emblem of Kaulon.

16 Church

Cattolica di Stilo

At the foot of Monte Consolino, in Stilo, the Cattolica fits into a brick cube topped by five small domes. Inside, four columns divide the interior into nine parts, the central one beneath the highest dome, and there is a painted Christ Pantocrator. Built in the 9th to 10th centuries, it appears in the Italian passport.

17 Castle

Fortezza delle Castella

Set on a tiny peninsula, the fortress of Le Castella seems to float just above the Ionian Sea. Observe its east side, where a storm in the 1970s exposed beneath the foundations a wall about 40 metres long, Hellenistic in appearance. In the 17th century, a village still lived in the shelter of its walls.

18 Village

Santa Severina

From the rocky hill of Santa Severina, let your gaze wander over the Neto valley running down to the Ionian coast. The town, taken by the Arabs in 840 and then freed by Nikephoros Phokas in 880, remained Byzantine until 1066. Its castle, whose upkeep Frederick II was already having inspected in 1228, still guards the rock.

19 Abbey

San Giovanni in Fiore Abbey

Abbazia Florense

You are standing before the first building of San Giovanni in Fiore, the cradle of the town. After their first monastery burned down, the monks of Joachim of Fiore's order chose this rocky spur in 1215, where the Neto and the Arvo meet. The complex ranks among the largest religious buildings in Calabria.

20 Lake

Lago Arvo

Created between 1927 and 1931 by damming the Arvo with a 280-metre embankment of earth and clay, this lake in the Sila stretches for some 8.7 kilometres. Look out for a half-drowned hill that has become an island, and yellow-legged gulls that come to nest far from the sea. Its shores have yielded traces of Homo erectus.

21 Nature park

I Giganti della Sila

22 Village

Camigliatello Silano

At 1,271 metres on the Sila Grande, Camigliatello Silano is surrounded by Calabrian pines, giving way higher up to beeches. Its church of Santi Roberto e Biagio gives pride of place to the pine of these forests, right up to the altar. In summer as in winter, you can reach San Nicola Silvana Mansio on the historic Sila train.

23 Museum

Museo della Biodiversità

24 Church

Duomo di Cosenza

Rebuilt after the earthquake of 1184, the cathedral was consecrated in 1222 in the presence of Frederick II, who gave it a staurotheke. Restorations stripped it of its Baroque decoration, and it keeps the tomb of Isabella of Aragon, Queen of France. In a side chapel, look for the Byzantine icon of the Madonna del Pilerio nursing the Child.