How to get there

The main airports are Lamezia Terme and Reggio Calabria. Ryanair fly directly London Stanstead to Lamezia, Thomsonfly do Gatwick and Manchester during the summer season.

From Naples it is a 3.5 hours drive by car. A good alternative is to take the train from Naples to Calabria, prices start at 25 euro one way and the journey takes just over 3 hours. Whether you go by train or car you will enjoy this fantastic journey along the coast with the Mediterranean on the one side and the vast mountains on the other. An experience in itself!

See also: useful information  

Direct flights to Sant Eufemia (SUF) airport in Lamezia Terme or  Reggio Calabia

• Belgium JetAirFly (Brussels)
• Canada Sunquest (or Skyservice) (Toronto)
• Germany Air Berlin,  Condor,  JetAirFly (Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hannover, Munich and more)
• Italy Alitalia (Rome, Milan)
• Italy AirOne (Bologna, Genova, Milano-Linate, Roma-Fiumicino, Torino Caselle and more)
• Italy Alpi Eagles (Venice)
• Italy Milan-Reggio Calabria MyAir
• Malta Air Malta Valletta-Reggio Calabria
• Switzerland Helvetic (Zurich)
• United Kingdom Ryanair (London Stanstead)
• United Kingdom Thomsonfly (London Gatwick and Manchester)
• United States Eurofly  (New York JFK)
• TuiFly is a charter that also sell seat only to Lamezia from Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and Germany.

 About Calabria

Calabria is the most southern province of Italy's mainland. With it's 750 km long coast it offers long, sandy and mostly completely empty beaches. In Calabria you can enjoy the authentic, unspoilt southern Italy and in many villages time has stood still and life is very quiet and tranquil.

From coast to coast it's only 40 kilometers and to cross the mountains is an exceptional experience. The roads are good and safe and you can enjoy the vast unspoiled nature, the medioeval towns and maybe stop and have a different kind of lunch at a rustic farmhouse before arriving at the other coast for a cooling swim.

From the whole eastern coast of Calabria you can see the Aeolian islands laying in the azur blue sea. Boats go daily to those magnificient volcanic islands (still active!) and you can visit Stromboli for a warm dip in a geiser, something rumoured to have very positive effects on our bodies. It was on Stromboli that Ingrid Bergman is rumoured to have had her love affair with Marcello Mastroianni and it's romantic views are still a fantastic experience for the people visiting the island.

On the western coast you will also find Tropea, one of the most well known villages in Calabria. It's clinging on a rock above the sea and has panoramic views of the Mediterranean sea and the Aeolian islands. Small cosy restaurants, bars and shops make it a popular destination for visitors.

The ancient town of Pizzo is another special place worth visiting. Like Tropea, Pizzo is full of dwindling alleys, cosy small streets with restaurants and bars. The Tartufo icecream, famous and loved all over Italy, originated here and in many cafes you can enjoy this delicacy whilst watching life pass by in this small town. The town is a favourite destination for the surrounding towns and offers many good restaurants and the Marina is very lively 'till the small hours because of it's beautifully themed cocktail bars.

Just outside Pizzo an amazing church, carved out in a cliff, lays on the beach overlooking the sea. It's called Piedegrotta and was built in memory of the sailors who miracously survived when their boat sank hundreds of years ago. The church is filled with statues, saints plus some surprising caracters such as Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy and it's is a well visited church still today among the locals.

The massive Aspromonte mountain range is accessible by small roads and here you will feel the mystique from old times. Abandoned villages, impressive nature and the secrets of this mountain are all something that makes it a very special visit! A beautiful place to visit here is Pentadattilo (five fingers in latin), a small village perched on the cliffs that make it look like a hand, now abandoned but looked after by some local artists.

On the eastern (Ioninan) coast, the pretty towns are located in the hills and mountains a few kilometers inland. The coastal towns were built in the past few hundred years when the coastlines had turned safe from invaders and us such are not particularly interesting. One exception is Roccella: it's recently restored medieval castle dominates the views and the town has a lively townsquare and boulevard. You can find many old towns worth a visit such as Gerace, Placanica, Stilo and San Severina. Here time has stood still, or so it seems, for many hundreds of years. It is this tranquillity that has attraced a number of non-Italians to purchase old townhouses for use in summerholidays. The beaches on the eastern coast are many kilometers long and empty.

Calabrian cuisine is very tasty and rich with lots of locally grown produce such as fresh vegetables, fresh fish, local pasta dishes, lots of local antipasti made of aubergines, zucchini, olives, different cheeses and meat. Often the antipasti is so filling that the maincourse will have to wait a while – the reason Italian dinners last longer! The locally produced wines are excellent and offers quite a selection of both reds and whites. After dinner a digestivo, to help the digestion, is recommended. Many local digestivi are being offered, all made with local herbs and spices. Another classic after dinner drink is the limoncello, made of lemons and wonderfully fresh in taste on a hot summer's evening.

Geograpical and historical information

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A region in southern Italy, Calabria occupies the "toe" of the Italian peninsula south of Naples. It is bounded in the north by the region of Basilicata, to the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and to the east by the Ionian Sea. Calabria faces the island of Sicily across the Strait of Messina. The region covers 15,080 km² and has a population of 2.05 million.

The regional capital has been Catanzaro since 1970. The region is divided into five provinces: Catanzaro, Cosenza, Crotone, Reggio di Calabria and Vibo Valentia. Although Catanzaro is its administrative capital, Reggio di Calabria, former capital, still hosts the regional Parliament. The capital changement has been matter of important riots in Reggio di Calabria in 1970.

Calabria was originally inhabited by a variety of Italic tribes, cousins of the Latins who populated Rome. Greek traders encountered one of these tribes, the Itali, and gave their name to the entire peninsula. Thus, in many ways, Calabria was the first "Italy."

As "Magna Graecia" Calabria was an important centre of Greek civilisation before the rise of the Roman Empire. Crotone was the home of Pythagoras, the father of geometry. Calabrian most famous Greek sculptures, the 5th century brones of warriors, the "Bronzi di Riace" are now hosted in Reggio Calabria. Greek civilation was already on the wane when other Italic tribesmen, the Lucanians and Brutti, began pouring into Calabria. These tribes, close relatives of the Samnites, founded many of the Calabrian cities still extant today.

After several wars with rival Italian tribes, Calabria became thoroughly Romanized, through population by Roman soldier-colonies. Many Romans, including Cicero, had vacation homes in Vibo Valentia. Calabria was for many years part of the Roman Empire and after its fall, was devastated during the Gothic War before it came under the rule of a local dux for the Byzantine Empire. In the 9th and 10th centuries, Calabria, which had been the rich breadbasket of Rome before Egypt was conquered, was the borderland between Byzantine rule and the Arab emirs in Sicily, subject to raids and skirmishes, dopopulated and demoralized, with vibrant Greek monasteries providing fortresses of culture. In the 1060s Normans, under the leadership of Robert Guiscard's brother Roger established a presence in this borderland, organized a government along Byzantine lines that was run by the local Greek magnates of Calabria. In 1098, Pope Urban II bestowed on Roger the equivalence of an apostolic legate and the Hauteville clan formed the precursors of the Kingdom of Naples which in one form or other ruled Calabria until the unification of Italy. This kingdom itself came under many rulers: the Hapsburg dynasties of both Spain and Austria; the French Bourbon dynasty, and briefly Napoleon's general Murat, who was executed in the small town of Pizzo.

Throughout all this, Calabria remained a very rural and exploited region. The Aspromonte, a mountainous region of central Calabria, was the scene of a famous battle of the Risorgimento (unificationof Italy), in which Garibaldi was wounded. Several of the important philosophers of the Risorgimento (namely, Bernardino Telesio from Cosenza, Gioacchino da Fiore from San Giovanni in Fiore, Tommaso Campanella from Stilo) came from Calabria, and famous Americans of Calabrian descent are almost too numerous to name.

Calabria is also the home of a small Griko-speaking community in Bovesia, the region otherwise known as Grecìa Calabra. Also there are many small towns where Albanian is still the main language.

Organized crime (namely, ndrangheta) used to be quite strong in Calabria for many decades, but seems to be waning.

The seawater around Calabria is very clear, and there is a good level of tourist accommodation. The poet Gabriele d'Annunzio called the seafront at Reggio "The most beautiful kilometer in Italy".