Calabria historical timeline

Origins

Greek colonists arrived on Calabria's coasts from around the 8th century BC, founding Rhegion (Reggio Calabria), Kroton (Crotone), Locri, and Sybaris as part of what the Romans later called Magna Graecia, «Great Greece». These cities grew wealthy on trade in grain, timber, and wine, and for a time rivaled or surpassed cities in Greece itself; Kroton was famous both for its athletes and for hosting the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, who established a school there in the late 6th century BC.

Turning points

Roman conquest, and later Byzantine, Norman, and Spanish rule, brought successive waves of new institutions and settlers without ever fully integrating Calabria into the economic centers of the Italian peninsula. Italian unification in 1861 proved a difficult turning point rather than a straightforward benefit: Calabria's agrarian economy struggled to compete with the industrializing north, brigandage followed the change in government, and the region entered a long period of poverty that culminated in mass emigration -- first to the Americas, later to northern Europe and northern Italy -- through much of the 20th century.

Influential people

Pythagoras remains the region's best-known ancient resident, but Calabria's Greek period also produced Milo of Croton, a celebrated Olympic wrestler, and later contributed several early modern scholars and clergy who helped preserve Greek learning in the West during the Byzantine centuries. In the 20th century, waves of emigrants from Calabrian villages built communities abroad, particularly in the Americas and Australia, that remain connected to their towns of origin today.

Cultural evolution

Centuries of relative isolation allowed distinct local cultures to persist alongside the dominant Calabrian dialect: Griko-speaking communities in the Bovesia area near Reggio Calabria, Arbëreshë Albanian villages founded by refugees from the 15th century onward, and the Occitan-speaking town of Guardia Piemontese, settled by Waldensian refugees from Piedmont in the 14th century. Rather than dissolving under a single regional identity, these enclaves have kept separate languages and customs into the present.

Present-day significance

Calabria today combines archaeological sites, coastal tourism, and depopulated interior villages within a single, compact region. National park designations for Pollino, Sila, and Aspromonte, along with UNESCO recognition for Pollino's ancient beech forests and for the Varia di Palmi festival, have brought new institutional attention to landscapes and traditions that were, for much of the 20th century, primarily associated with poverty and emigration.