Enrico Massetti - Calabria Sea: Mountains--Nature

Calabria
Sea - Mountains - Nature

Text Copyright Enrico Massetti 2021

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Published by Enrico Massetti Publishing

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Calabria, Magna Graecia cot, offers a wide range of natural, adventure, artistic, popular, food, and wine attractions and rich historical, cultural, and ethical heritage mixing with its well-known hospitality sense: different facets an all-to-discover world in a region only.

Calabria wants to create the right conditions to guarantee an unforgettable experience to its visitors to involve all their five senses to leave them an excellent memory. It is well known for its coasts even if in the last years it has also developed the internal and mountain areas from a touristic point of view for its many old towns full of history and natural parks. In Calabria, the general increase in the demand for green and cultural tourism has also improved services and accommodation facilities to guarantee the touristic offers quality.

This guide wants to summarize what Calabria can offer tourists in a way that mixes the experience of visiting and the emotion it gives them.

But more than a portfolio of its beauties, this guide aims to give the tour operators the possibility to see, plan, and realize the product Calabria based on the principles of sustainable tourism.

Often called the Switzerland of the South, Calabria covers the mountainous toe of Italy. Here one finds the most beautiful forests and the hillsides covered with the white leaves of ancient olive trees.

Traveling between the Calabrian mountains, in a fantastic land of incredible beauty, you are in a region bounded with two seas of approximately eight hundred kilometers coasts. For this particular configuration, incalculable views are present. Nature has a plot magnificently, the lines that talent and social work must follow, or art efforts can improve.

Calabrian land must be limited to approaches through cliffs and beaches. You should look at the centuries-old roots, the unpolluted and superb environment, traditions, and ethics that have survived along the time of natures generosity.

Calabria has a predominantly mountainous territory, large green reserves, and lakes with intense splendor inside Sila demoted summit to peak into or the sea on the Range Coast, very high silver firs and rushing stream from the Serre, the last win on the Mediterranean between the Aspromonte summits. Its closed in the north with the Pollino and Orsomarso imposing reliefs.

Eternal clashes, legendary stories of shepherds and brigands about inaccessible paths, a continuous alternate between harmonious relieves and vertical summits, unlike places with fancy and queerness, that fascinate and disconcert, as vegetation and fauna, unexpected and unforeseen, make you think to be in Scotland two steps distant from the Mediterranean marquis.

Its a world to explore where nature is confused. Nature civilizations, its exciting to discover. Its tented centers, churches, monasteries, castles, old palaces, traditions, art and folklore, languages, and dialects are always different. There are many amusement occasions for adventure lovers, skiing, nature, hiking, and extreme sports.

The synthesis of a trip that different authors had told with precision and knowledge: as a trip fellow of the XIX century aristocrat, Norman Douglas, author of Old Calabria, maybe the best book written about the region, which narrates the atmosphere of the beginning of 19th century where valleys and Calabrian mountains described with love and wonder.

In ancient times, the Greek Pythagoras founded his school at Crotone, while at Locri, Zaleucus dictated his laws, creating the first written code of rules in the Western World. The most prestigious gymnasiums of the Olympic athletes were at Sibari. It was here that Strabo dictated the example that historians were to follow: seventy days were enough to destroy the rich and famous town.

They shared the same roots in Magna Graecia, founded by Greek colonists between the 7th and the 6th century BC. For a long time, they conflicted with one another: Crotone won the day over Sybaris, but they succumbed, in the battle of the fair, to Locri Epizephiri.

In the intervals between the wars, with the inevitable intervention of various divinities, there were long periods of splendor in the arts and philosophy.

In 572 BC, the people of Croton defeated those of Sibari. In the early 1980s, a famous archaeological find became the symbol of Calabria: the Riace Bronzes. They are the two spectacular Greek statues dredged from the sea and exhibited, from the early 1980s, in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria, the most important archaeological museum of all the Italian Peninsula.

One of the two bronze statues is by Fidia, the master Greek sculptor of the 5th century. He is famous for the Parthenons reliefs since their exposure at the Museo Nazionale. Hundreds of thousands of people visit Calabria to discover its extraordinary archaeological and historical patrimony.

Calabria boasts almost 800 km of coast. They are on the Tyrrhenian waters, of the Straits of Messina, and then, on the opposite side, the Ionian Sea. Castles and watchtowers are also characteristic sights along the Tyrrhenian coast, starting from the one built by Charles V at Amantea. The Franciscans later embellished this fortress town. They left several traces of their presence, the most outstanding being San Bernardino da Siena (1436). On the Ionic strip, there were three city-states and three ancient civilizations: Sibari, Crotone, and Locri.

Tourists choosing Calabria as their journey destination are, for the most part (92%) attracted by its 800 km Region coasts. Its well-equipped, sunny, and wild beaches offer all kinds of holiday solutions as well as relaxation, privacy, sports, and animation proposals. Calabrian coasts and beach morphology, from white sand to cliffs, offer different seaside resort opportunities within a few kilometers.

In the following pages, we introduce you to those seaside resorts and those towns on Calabrian vast coasts and beaches, which for their particular landscapes and touristic sites are first-class holiday places.