Santa Maria del Cedro

Santa Maria del Cedro is a town of about 5,200 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, between Scalea and Grisolia, where the Lao plain meets the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the town that gave the whole coast its name: here, more than in any other municipality of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast, the citron is grown, the ancient citrus that every summer brings rabbis to the Riviera in search of the perfect etrog. And it is here, in the hamlet of Marcellina, that Laos, the city founded by refugees from Sybaris, once stood.

Geography

The territory occupies the southern end of the Lao plain, a small but fertile lowland created by two perennial rivers, the Lao and the Abatemarco, which come down from the nearby Pollino National Park. Towards the sea opens a wide beach on the Tyrrhenian; behind it the hinterland rises gently towards the Apennines. The town has two cores: the main village, born around the old farmstead on today’s main square, and Marcellina, about 5 km towards Scalea, a community of some 2,700 inhabitants that grew over the ruins of Laos.

History

The oldest story is that of Laos. In 510 BC Sybaris was destroyed by Croton and its fleeing inhabitants founded a new city on the right bank of the Lao river: its coins with the bull turning its head repeat the Sybarite type, and Strabo records it as “as large as Pompeii”. By Pliny’s time it had already disappeared. Its remains lie on the hill above Marcellina, called Palecastro (“old castle” in Greek) or San Bartolo, and the finds are today in the Scalea antiquarium and the National Museum of Magna Graecia in Reggio Calabria; excavation is hampered by the modern settlement, which grew right on top of the ancient city. The territory keeps traces of almost every age: the early medieval settlement of Abatemarco, the ruins of the Castle of San Michele, a Norman aqueduct and the Torre Sant’Andrea, a link in the chain of coastal towers of the Riviera.

The present town was born in the 17th century, when a flood of the Abatemarco river destroyed the village of the same name and the displaced settled further down the valley, around a farmstead. A fief of the Brancati of Naples until Italian unification, it was long called Cipollina, a name that probably means “the place on this side of the Pollino”. It was a hamlet of Grisolia until 1948, when it became an independent municipality; it took the name Santa Maria in 1955 and its present name in 1968. The coat of arms of 1958 sums up the place’s identity: the face of the Madonna, a citron fruit and a Greek column, with the sea in the background. After 1970 the SS18 bypass and the doubling of the railway opened the plain to beach tourism.

What to see

The citron is the reason for a visit. The variety grown here, the “liscio Diamante” commonly called the Santa Maria del Cedro citron, is a large, fragrant fruit grown mainly for candying, and for Jews it is the most prized cultivar: every year rabbis come to the town to choose, tree by tree, the flawless fruits to be used as etrog in the rites of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. According to some interpretations of Jewish thought, the fruit of the tree of knowledge in Eden was a citron. In the kitchen the citrus goes into traditional and modern recipes, sweet and savoury, and the Consorzio del Cedro di Calabria, based in the town, looks after its protection and promotion.

The story is told by the Citron Museum, housed in the Carcere dell’Impresa: a 15th–16th-century workshop long owned by the Sollazzo, a family of noble origins from the town, whose name comes from the Greek karteros, “strong, imposing”. At Marcellina you climb the hill of Laos, where the remains of the Sybarite city surface; nearby, finds of the 3rd–4th century BC have been made and, along the old SS18, the remains of a large ancient dwelling. The tour is completed by the Castle of San Michele with the Norman aqueduct, in the area of the medieval settlement of Abatemarco, and the Torre Sant’Andrea on the coast.

The Riviera dei Cedri

The name Riviera dei Cedri designates the northern stretch of Calabria’s Tyrrhenian coast, in the province of Cosenza: twenty-four municipalities from Tortora to Paola, the same ones ALTICOS covers. It owes its name to the widespread cultivation of the citron, today concentrated above all in Santa Maria del Cedro but also characteristic of Scalea, Orsomarso, Santa Domenica Talao, Buonvicino, Belvedere Marittimo and Cetraro; part of the territory falls within the Pollino National Park. The Giro d’Italia paid tribute to the town in 2005, when its second stage finished here.

Getting there

Santa Maria del Cedro lies on the SS18 state road and is served by two stations on the Tyrrhenian line: Grisolia-Santa Maria, in the territory of Grisolia, and Marcellina-Verbicaro-Orsomarso in the hamlet of Marcellina (also known as Verbicaro Scalo). By car from the A2 “del Mediterraneo”: from the north, exit Lagonegro nord, then SS585 and SS18; from the south, exit Falerna and SS18 northbound. Secondary roads link it to Scalea, Grisolia and Verbicaro. The nearest airport is Lamezia Terme.