Citron Museum and Carcere dell’Impresa

The Carcere dell’Impresa was never a prison: the name comes from the Greek karteros, “strong, imposing”, and the building is an old 15th–16th-century workshop long owned by the Sollazzo, a family of noble origins from Santa Maria del Cedro. Today it houses the Citron Museum, established by the Consorzio del Cedro di Calabria, the body that from the town looks after the protection and promotion of the fruit.

The museum tells of a fruit that gave its name to an entire coast. The citron grown here, the “liscio Diamante” variety, is large and fragrant, grown mainly for candying, and in the Jewish tradition it is the most prized cultivar: every year rabbis travel to Santa Maria del Cedro to choose in person the perfect fruits to be used as etrog at the feast of Sukkot, which under Jewish law must come from trees of particular species and be free of imperfections. According to some opinions in Jewish thought, the etrog was the fruit of the tree of knowledge in Eden. In the kitchen the citron goes into sweet and savoury recipes, traditional and reinvented.