Discover our beautiful area

There’s a corner in Calabria, between Stilo and Gerace, where sea and mountains meet each other: forests and villages on the mountains are perfect look-outs on their twins on the coast. It seems that there exists a double soul in this strip of land, separated by an umbilical cord of winding streets. Looking from the top, it seems the coast lies only stone’s throw from you, but you need to drive a string of curves through mountains and rivers to reach the top and get this unbelievable spectacle.

Stilo (the so-called “Sunshine Town”), where the philosopher Tommaso Campanella was born, has an unbelievable breathtaking view on the wide shimmering Ionion sea.  

From the “Cattolica”, a small ancient byzantine clay temple, the view is just astonishing, but if you actually want to get a bird’s eye view on the coast, you need to walk and climb for about fourty minutes on the rock to the Norman Temple cemetery, from where a barren, rugged landscape surely touches you deep inside. That’s the place where the St. John’s theorists once were. Nowadays there still lives a small monks community who still practice the ancient orthodox rite of the full immersion baptism.

Driving down the rapid decent of Stilo, you get to Monasterace Marina. It’s here, between the crystal clear sea and the railway, under the overhanging view of a lighthouse, that the ruins of the Doric thriving colony of the Magna Grecia, the ancient Kaulon, have been discovered. 24 centuries of history, glory and majesty adrift at sea. This old temple was built in honour of Zeus Homarios and it’s dated back to 420bc. It’s particularly praiseworthy at spring time, when the blooms flourish and the scent of the Mediterranean Sea permeates the air and its silence, only occasionally broken by the train travelling to Reggio Calabria…

“Abstract from the piece Magna cum Laude, P. 60-68, Plein Air ed. June 2014”