Welcome to my little corner of Italy.
“Kalimera.” A spry, older woman dressed in black warmly greeted us as we stepped out of the car and began to walk up the street to the main square of Gallicianò. She was like the town sentinel and greeter all in one, speaking perfect Italian to us, then lithely pulling a cell phone out of her pocket to call our guide in a language I didn’t understand at all. Read More
As we drove up the hill to Badolato, a fleet of bicycles was coming down. The riders looked serious and there seemed to be a lot of them for a weekday morning in spring. “They’re Danish. We have a large Scandinavian community here in Badolato.” Having heard of the town’s welcoming of migrants some twenty years previously, I had expected a different sort of foreigner in Badolato. I quickly learned that this medieval village was a melting pot, a harmonious mix of native Badolatesi, migrants, emigrants and vacationers. Read More
When I begin to talk enthusiastically about the archeological museum in Reggio Calabria, I usually just get blank stares. If I show a photo or two of the famous Bronzes of Riace, interest piques. Once I have my listener’s attention, I introduce the rest of the museum’s collection. Read More
Growing up, I had a certain conception of Easter – the Easter bunny, colored eggs and the first wearing of a new spring dress, but there was also the Easter story and Easter Sunday in church, which always seemed like a very joyous occasion. When living in Italy, I had a number of opportunities in which I was able to experience Easter in Calabria, but this year I was invited to the town of Badolato, specifically for their Easter festivities. Full immersion. Read More
Otherworldly screams? Laments from the afterlife? The bloody hand of the devil? The poor town of Pentedattilo on the edge of the Aspromonte Mountains in the southern tip of Calabria has seen it all. Earthquakes and precarious shifting of soil lent the final blow. But this cluster of edifices clinging to a strange rock formation, finally abandoned completely in the 1960s, seems to have been biding its time. Perhaps this ghost town just wasn’t ready to give up the ghost, of whom it is said, there are many.Read More
“We were told in no uncertain terms that we were the type of people who wore shoes…” Grazia Ietto Gillies reminisces of her early life in By the Olive Groves, A Calabrian Childhood, a memoir that focuses on her time growing up in Delianuova, a hill town of southern Calabria.Read More
If you happen to be celebrating Easter in Calabria and you arrive a little early, you may just come across what looks like a ragdoll hanging from a balcony or the side of a house. Not to panic, this is not some form of malocchio or evil eye, but Corajisima, a traditional practice during Lent in Italy, specifically, Calabria and other areas of the south.Read More
The list is out – early in January, the New York Times unveiled their “52 Places To Go in 2017” and Calabria made the cut! That’s right. The only place chosen in the entire length of the Italian boot wasn’t one of the usual favorites – not Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast or even the hill towns of Umbria. This year, go to the toe – visit Calabria!
Lots of greenery, trails, a playground, a wild animal rescue center, a military museum, an amphitheater and contemporary sculpture – the Catanzaro Park of Biodiversity or the Parco della Biodiversità Mediterranea has a lot going on amidst its 60 hectares (148 acres) and 50,000 varieties of Mediterranean plants. Read More
Growing up in the United States, I’d see royalty on TV every so often and think of it as a phenomenon of a distant land. I figured I would have had a greater opportunity of meeting an astronaut. Then I began spending time in Italy and it seemed that I ran into royalty with a certain frequency. Perhaps not every nobleman or woman I encountered actually had the title, but there was certainly a connection: the grandson of a baron, the brother of a prince, a marquis, and then there was the Duchessa Avarna di Gualtieri, a fellow American with a genuine title of Sicilian nobility.Read More