Calabria

Calabria was one of the heartlands of Magna Graecia, the Greek world of southern Italy. From the 8th century BC colonists founded Sybaris, whose luxury became proverbial, Kroton, where Pythagoras set up his school, Locri, with one of the earliest written law codes in the Greek world, and Rhegion, today's Reggio. The native Bruttii held the mountains until Rome conquered the region; the Visigothic king Alaric died near Cosenza in AD 410, and legend says he was buried beneath the Busento river with his treasure.

For centuries Calabria was Byzantine and Greek-speaking, dotted with monasteries of the Greek rite; Rossano Cathedral keeps a famous 6th-century illuminated gospel book, the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis. The Normans conquered the region in the 11th century, and from then on it was part of the Kingdom of Sicily and later the Kingdom of Naples, a poor land of great estates, Saracen raids and fortified coastal towers.

Earthquakes have repeatedly reshaped Calabria: a sequence in 1783 devastated the south, and in 1908 an earthquake and tsunami destroyed Reggio and Messina, killing tens of thousands. After unification, emigration emptied villages across the region. In 1970 Reggio erupted in months of riots when Catanzaro was chosen as the regional capital. In 1972 a diver discovered the two bronze warriors off Riace that became the region's symbol.

Calabria is a mosaic of minorities. Dozens of villages, mostly in the province of Cosenza, are Arbëreshë, founded by Albanians who fled the Ottoman advance from the 15th century, and they keep their language and Byzantine-rite liturgy. In the Aspromonte villages around Bova a Greek dialect, Grecanico, survives among older people, and Guardia Piemontese keeps an Occitan dialect brought by Waldensian settlers, who were massacred there in 1561.

Religion is traditional and processional. Holy Week brings rites such as the Affruntata, in which statues of the Virgin and the risen Christ are carried to "meet" in the town square, and pilgrims walk to the sanctuary of the Madonna of Polsi in the heart of Aspromonte. San Francesco di Paola, a 15th-century hermit born in Calabria, is the region's patron.

Music is based on the tarantella, played on the zampogna bagpipe, accordion and the chitarra battente, a steel-strung guitar. Hospitality is intense, and the family and the village remain the centre of social life. The 'Ndrangheta has made the region's name synonymous with organised crime, and anti-mafia associations and cooperatives on confiscated land are a quiet counter-movement.

Calabria has about 1.8 million people. Reggio Calabria, on the strait, is the largest city with about 170,000; Catanzaro, the regional capital, has about 85,000, and Cosenza, Lamezia Terme and Crotone are the other main centres. The University of Calabria has its campus at Arcavacata, near Cosenza.

The region has one of the lowest incomes in Italy and among its highest unemployment rates, and young people continue to leave for the north and abroad. Agriculture is still important: olive oil, citrus, the red onions of Tropea, and the bergamot grown on the coast near Reggio, which supplies most of the world's bergamot oil for perfumes and Earl Grey tea. Tourism is concentrated on the coasts in summer, when emigrant families return.

Towns fill in the evening after the heat of the day, and August brings village festivals, fireworks and crowded beaches. Depopulation of inland villages, the reach of the 'Ndrangheta and slow infrastructure are the recurring public issues.

Calabrian cooking is built on chilli, pork and vegetables. Peperoncino goes into almost everything, and the town of Diamante holds a chilli festival each September. 'Nduja, from Spilinga near Tropea, is a soft, fiery pork salume made to be spread on bread or stirred into pasta, and soppressata and capocollo are cured pork with protected status. Sardella, sometimes called "Calabrian caviar", is a chilli paste of preserved baby fish.

The sweet red onion of Tropea is eaten raw in salads and cooked into jams. Fileja, a twisted hand-made pasta from the Vibo Valentia area, is served with 'nduja or a pork ragù; in Catanzaro, morzello is a spicy offal stew eaten in a round bread called pitta. Swordfish is caught in the Strait of Messina and grilled or rolled in Scilla and Bagnara. Caciocavallo silano is one of the region's protected cheeses.

For something sweet, the tartufo di Pizzo is an ice-cream ball with a melted chocolate heart, liquorice has been made at Rossano for centuries, and bergamot flavours sweets and liqueurs. The best-known wine is Cirò, a red from the Gaglioppo grape grown on the Ionian coast, and Greco di Bianco is a sweet white.

The Tyrrhenian coast has most of the famous sights. Tropea's old town stands on cliffs above white beaches, facing the church of Santa Maria dell'Isola, with the headland of Capo Vaticano nearby; Pizzo has the castle where Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat was executed in 1815 and a church carved into the rock at Piedigrotta. Further south, Scilla's Castello Ruffo guards a headland linked to the myth of Scylla, with the fishermen's houses of Chianalea built at the water's edge. Reggio Calabria's National Archaeological Museum of Magna Graecia displays the Riace Bronzes, and its seafront promenade looks across the strait to Sicily and Etna.

The mountains fill the interior. The Sila, a national park, is a high plateau of pine and beech forest around lakes Arvo, Ampollino and Cecita, with the resort of Camigliatello and the giant old pines of Fallistro; San Giovanni in Fiore keeps the abbey of the medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore. Aspromonte National Park rises at the tip of the toe, with the Pietra Cappa monolith, waterfalls, and the Greek-speaking village of Bova, while the abandoned village of Pentedattilo sits beneath a hand-shaped rock.

On the Ionian coast, Gerace has a large Norman cathedral, Stilo the small Byzantine church of the Cattolica, and Le Castella an Aragonese castle on a rocky islet. The single standing column of Capo Colonna marks a Greek temple to Hera near Crotone, and in the north the Raganello gorge cuts through the Pollino near Civita.