Region of CALABRIA
THE TOE OF ITALY
Very popular with Italian holidaymakers, the vacation delights of Italy´s sun-bathed deep south are only now being discovered by the rest of us. Calabria is the heart of the mezzogiorno (the Italian for “midday” the phrase refers to the baking sunshine in which the region basks), and you´ll know it as the toe of Italy. This is the region that “kicks” Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea.
Calabria could be in another country to its urbane northern neighbours such as Milan, Bologna and Florence, Offering superb value for your euros a little holiday money in Calabria can go a long way. The coastline on three sides curving round to meet the Ionian Sea on the south-eastern coast of Italy, Calabria has mile upon mile of sandy beaches, rocky coves, spectacular headlands & space.
Calabria is also a region of remarkable beauty, with a long history dating back to its role at the heart of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece) in Classical antiquity; indeed far earlier than that. Explore its valleys from your Calabria property and discover a culture untouched by recent centuries. The coastal areas swiftly climb to rugged and rocky mountains where you stumble upon hamlets whose origins are lost in antiquity, where some are lived in and some abandoned. Remarkably also there is burgeoning skiing industry in Calabria offering you the perfect retreat whether fancy getting out your ski boots and taking to the slopes, or bathing on the golden sands of Calabria.
There are hamlets in the Calabrian hills seemingly exclusively populated by old women in traditional black dresses, old men sat for hours outside the bar and children playing in the streets, and when you discover populated villages it´s like stepping back 50 years or in certain villages 100 years.
Calabria´s main city is Cosenza which provides a good base for exploring La Sila, one of the last great stretches of European forest still intact. The romans changed that when they came and cleared the land, in many cases making wasteland of fertile uplands. Having a holiday in Calabria your following in the footsteps of thousands of years of invasion and settlement, but the romans are fairly recent visitors this is a region of ancient roots. The oldest inhabitants are bruttians, an italic tribe which is one of many scattered by the romans. The Bruttians lived in Calabria around 1000BC. Times were best for the old Calabrians under the Greeks, who laid out an efficient system for agriculture. Greek invaders arrived around 800BC, and mathematician Pythagoras was a native of the town of Crotone.
Things got unpleasant for Calabra under the romans but much worse was to come. The Visigoths arrived in the fifth century, following the sacking of Rome, and legend has it that Visigoth King Alaric is buried with his treasure in the river Busento near Cosenza.
A wearying wave of invasions then ensued that Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, Saracens and Normans colonised or simply pillaged Calabria, which became part of the Kingdom Sicily in the early middle ages. Refugees from Albania arrived around the year 1400, bringing their language. During your holidays at your property you musty visit Pollino National Park lying in Northern Calabria and crossing the border into Basilicata, Pollino has 34 villages and the chief among them is Castrovillari, where medieval Albanian is the local language.
Calabria only really moved out of the feudal age with unification in the late 1800s, and the overthrow of Bourbon dynasty.
But things are changing in Calabria of course with huge amounts of government money pouring in since the end of world war II, an attempt to right the evils identified by Carlo Levi, to halt the haemorrhaging of population to the United States and metropolitan Italy, and to establish new anchors for an economy based on subsistence agriculture.
If your idea holiday home in Italy involves skiing, sun drenched beaches and exploring untamed mountain ranges. These in turn drop to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and on the eastern side inland the mountain ranges drop to the river Crati valley. The Le Serre mountains reach down to the toe of Italy, and east of Cosenza lie the Sila Mountains and forests.
CALABRIAN CUISINE
Calabrian cuisine is similar to that of Campania, with more of the Greek about it. Untypically Italian ingredients may be honey, almonds, figs, aubergine and swordfish. Pork features, as does pasta and strong cheeses such mature ricotta, provolone and pecorino. Italians generally eschew spices but youré likely to taste ginger (zenzero) and chilli. Calabria makes sweet white wines such as Greco di Blanco.
