Learn about Calabria

Calabria forms the toe of the Italian boot, a narrow, mountainous peninsula separating the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west from the Ionian Sea to the east. Almost nowhere in the region is more than an hour's drive from a coastline, yet the interior rises quickly into three distinct massifs -- Pollino in the north, Sila in the center, and Aspromonte in the south -- that have historically kept Calabria's towns isolated from one another and from the rest of Italy.

That isolation is part of the region's history, not just its geography. Calabria was, more than two thousand years ago, one of the wealthiest parts of the Greek world: colonists founded Kroton (modern Crotone), Locri, Sybaris, and Rhegion (modern Reggio Calabria) here as part of Magna Graecia, and Pythagoras ran his school of philosophy and mathematics at Kroton in the sixth century BC. In 1972, a diver off the coast near Riace found two full-size Greek bronze statues of warriors, cast around 460-450 BC. The Riace Bronzes are among the few large classical bronzes to survive antiquity rather than being melted down, and they are now displayed at the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria.

In more recent centuries Calabria has been one of Italy's poorer regions, and the 20th century brought heavy emigration from its inland villages, some of which are only now being repopulated through small-scale tourism and cultural initiatives rather than new construction. Agriculture remains central to the local economy: the hills around Reggio Calabria produce nearly all of the world's bergamot, a citrus fruit whose essential oil is a foundational ingredient in perfumery and in Earl Grey tea, and the coast is known for red onions, chili peppers, and cured pork products such as 'nduja.

Visitors today divide their time between the two coasts -- the cliffside town of Tropea and the beaches of the so-called Costa degli Dei on the Tyrrhenian side, quieter Ionian towns further east -- and the mountain interior, where Pollino, Sila, and Aspromonte National Parks protect old-growth forests, glacial lakes, and hiking routes. Calabria draws far fewer visitors than Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, or Sicily, and much of its interior remains reachable mainly by car.