Tortora Marina and the Gulf of Policastro

Tortora Marina occupies the plain facing the Gulf of Policastro, the last stretch of Calabrian coast before Basilicata. It is a young town: until the late 1970s it was a mosaic of ten districts, Benefici, Crisosa, Cutura, Girone, Impresa, Falconara, Pantani, Pergolo, Poiarelli and Riviera, which the growth of tourism fused into a single settlement of about 4,900 inhabitants; since the mid-1980s the town hall has come down here from the old town. The churches of Santo Stefano, the Madonna delle Grazie and Stella Maris mark its squares, and the districts of Castiglione, San Brancato, Santo Stefano and Sicilione complete the shoreline. The climate is that of the sea: mild winters and very hot summers.

It is also the oldest part of Tortora. At Rosaneto an open-air Lower Palaeolithic site, dated to about 150,000 years ago, has yielded a thousand stone tools, including 140 choppers and 67 handaxes: one of the oldest prehistoric sites in Italy. At the foot of the limestone cliff of Torre Nave, which also holds two caves listed in the regional register, the digs found in the lower layers the tools of Neanderthal man and in the upper ones those of Homo sapiens. In the 16th and 17th centuries silkworms were raised and sugar cane grown on this plain. Praja-Ajeta-Tortora railway station is about 2 km away.