Riviera dei Cedri · Calabria
Seaside villages, hill towns and Pollino landscapes: find where your trip begins.
The town of the “hanging water”: six kilometres of coast between the Fiumicello and the Bagni river, a village its people call U Casàle, the woods of Monte Pistuolo and the Terme Luigiane, with sulphurous springs known since antiquity and five Giro d’Italia stage finishes.
The Pollino’s “city of the eagle”: at 524 metres, one of the Borghi più belli d’Italia, Aieta keeps the Renaissance Palazzo Martirano-Spinelli, sixteenth-century churches, the Valle dei Mulini and, on Monte Calimaro, the remains of Aieta Vetere, a few kilometres from the sea at Praia.
A medieval village 150 metres above the Tyrrhenian with the Sanseverino Renaissance castle, a wooden crucifix of 1711 and a chapel dated 1091; at its feet the Marina, the Bruttian tombs of Capo Tirone and the Note di Fuoco fireworks festival.
Two souls on the same coast: the village 425 metres up on the Coastal Range, with the ruins of Castel Bonifati, five churches rich in art and its historic palazzi, and Cittadella del Capo by the sea, ancient Fella, with the Capo and Fella towers from the 12th to the 16th century.
The village born of three hamlets on the route between the Tyrrhenian and the interior: at 400 metres above the Corvino stream, in the Pollino park, Buonvicino keeps the Stretto gorge with the Sasso dei Greci, the cave of Abbot Ciriaco, a disciple of Saint Nilus, and his great bronze statue watching over the village.
The abbot’s town: from 1086 to 1810 Cetraro was a fief of the Benedictines of Montecassino, remembered in the church of San Benedetto with its Baroque organ, the three gates of the old town and the sea procession of 11 July. Below, the Marina, Borgo San Marco and the marina.
The “town of murals” and chilli-pepper capital at the heart of the Riviera dei Cedri: eight kilometres of beaches, the island of Cirella and a fishing village turned open-air art gallery.
The town of stonemasons and Spinelli marquises: a village 350 metres up on the slopes of the Coastal Range, with the mother church consecrated in 1166, the twelve-column bell tower of the Immacolata and a fief that for three centuries also ruled Paola and Guardia. Below, the Marina on the Tyrrhenian.
The village at 465 metres that looks out over the whole Riviera dei Cedri: from the sea at Acchio to the slopes of Monte La Mula, Grisolia combines covered stone alleys, the Palazzo Ducale, the ethnographic museum and the San Rocco procession with the caggie carried on the head.
The Occitan island of the South: the village 515 metres above the Tyrrhenian founded by Waldensians from the Piedmont valleys, where Guardiolo is still spoken and where the Porta del Sangue, the peephole doors and the Val Pellice rock recall the night of 5 June 1561.
Calabria’s gateway to the Pollino, where the Lucanian Mercure becomes the Lao: Laino Borgo brings together the sixteenth-century chapels of the Sanctuary of the Madonna dello Spasimo, the Good Friday Giudaica, the memory of Blessed Pietro Paolo Navarro and the river gorges, for rafting and canyoning.
The village at 360 metres above the Vaccuta stream valley, separated from Grisolia by a ravine: in the Pollino park, behind Diamante, Maierà combines contemporary artworks in its lanes, the Chilli Pepper Museum and its four churches.
The mountain village at 820 metres between the Pollino and the Orsomarso Mountains: the 1928 votive lighthouse for the Calabrians who fell in the Great War, the Baroque mother church of Santa Maria del Colle, the 9th-century Annunziata and a town that looks from the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino hinterland over the Mercure valley.
The village that gives its name to a mountain range: Orsomarso, in the Pollino park, keeps the Argentino valley with the last native roe deer and the Bosnian pine, the 10th-century Basilian chapel of Santa Maria di Mércuri and a village that grew around the fortress of Ursus Martius.
The town of Saint Francis, patron of Calabria: the sanctuary in the Isca valley, the underground church of Sotterra with its Byzantine frescoes, the Seven Channels fountain and the Rocchetta quarter, at the southern end of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast.
The Pollino village where the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast meets prehistory: the Grotta del Romito with the great aurochs engraved between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago, fifteen kilometres of the Lao river gorge inside a nature reserve and a medieval village with a Norman-Swabian castle and the gate of the changing of the Guard.
The beach town of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast on the Basilicata border: the island of Dino with its sea caves, the rock sanctuary of the Madonna della Grotta and the towers that once watched over the shore.
The cliff-top village of the Riviera dei Cedri: three bays in three kilometres, the rock arch of the Arcomagno, the Crawford Tower and a belvedere that takes in three regions.
The village where the Riviera dei Cedri ends: a hilltop old centre with the castle of the Sanseverino of Bisignano and the peace olive tree of 1918, the 13th-century church of Santa Maria della Neve and, by the sea along the SS18, Sangineto Lido. One of the great feudal families of Angevin Calabria took its name from here.
The village that looks over the Riviera dei Cedri from the Lao valley: founded in the 17th century by the Spinelli princes, grown with noble palazzi and chapels, tied by a century of emigration to the Dominican Republic and twinned with Santo Domingo.
The town that gives the Riviera dei Cedri its name: the fertile plain between the Lao and the Abatemarco where the citron chosen by rabbis for Sukkot is grown, the remains of the Sybarite city of Laos at Marcellina and the Citron Museum in the Carcere dell’Impresa.
The town of the “landing” on the Riviera dei Cedri: a terraced old town of covered passages, churches born in Byzantine times and watchtowers, the Torre Talao with caves inhabited in the Palaeolithic, and the feast of the Madonna del Carmine with the cinte carried on the head.
The northern gateway of Tyrrhenian Calabria: the village born of refugees from Blanda, the Oenotrian, Lucanian and Roman city on the Palècastro hill, the Palaeolithic site of Rosaneto, the Pollino mountains and the Marina on the Gulf of Policastro.
The village of the Battenti: at 428 metres in the Pollino park, behind the Riviera dei Cedri, Verbicaro keeps the night rite of Good Friday, the Zigni torchlight procession for the Madonna delle Grazie and a village of portals, alleys and seven churches, already described in 1797 by Lorenzo Giustiniani.
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