Church of Sotterra

In contrada Gaudimare, a staircase from the portico of the church of the Carmine leads down into a church beneath the ground: hence the name Sotterra. It was found in 1874 by Giovanni Battista Moscato and scientifically studied from 1925; scholars still debate its origins, but the most likely date is between the 9th and 10th centuries, when Byzantium’s return to Calabria and the Arab conquest of Sicily brought many Italo-Greek monks to the Tyrrhenian coast. Built above ground, it was buried by landslides and floods of the Palumbo stream probably in the early 1600s; a plaque of 1882 records that local farmers venerated the Virgin here “under the earth”.

The hall is about 16 metres long and just over four wide, divided into four bays by three arches, with a semicircular apse and, beside the entrance, a large basin perhaps used for baptism by immersion. The treasure is the frescoes of the apse and chancel: the Ascension with the Madonna at the centre among apostles and saints with the gaunt, hieratic faces typical of Byzantine painting; the Annunciation, with the archangel Gabriel and the Virgin holding a book, a stylised dove near her ear; the Madonna of the Pomegranate nursing the Child, with a praying figure and Saint Anthony Abbot. The polychrome brick floor draws geometric patterns, and on the walls remain the graffiti of medieval pilgrims: crosses, doves, fish and a galley beside a Jerusalem cross.