| PLACES TO VISIT
Catanzaro.
City Library “F. De Nobili” (Villa Trieste,
Margherita), where there are thousands of books, parchments
and old manuscripts; the provincial Musem of Villa Trieste
in which there are a rich collection of coins, more than
6500, of the Magna Graecia, Roman, Byzantine and Modern Ages;
many paintings by Antonello da Messina, Mattia Preti, Andrea
Cefaly, Salvator Rosa, Filippo Palizzi and others; a collection
of objects dating back to the Neoliyhic period and archaeological
finds of the Iron Age; the original 1519 “diplomi” kept in
the local Chamber of Commerce, that commemorate the “Articles
of the Silk Art” given to the city by Charles V, preceding
of eight years those of Florence, and that bear witness of
the development of one of the most prestigious school of
weaving whose high quality damasks and velvets won all Italian
and half of European markets, in fact the masters from Catanzaro
were called, in 1740, in Lyons to teach the French weavers.A
crimson silk damask, weaved in Catanzaro in 1600, is still
kept in the Church of the Monte, as memory of that ancient
art. You have to visit the “Morandi Viaduct” over the Fiumarella
river, the world highest* one-arch
bridge in reinforced concrete; the just restored St. Giovanni
Monumental Area with an angle tower dating back to the Norman
period and the collection of plaster casts in Prefettura
Square, with the casts by the world-famous calabrian sculptor
Francesco Jerace.
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*Domenico Laruffa,
INCONTRO CON LA CALABRIA
GUIDA TURISTICA GENERALE DELLA CALABRIA
seventh edition, editor La Ruffa, 1993 on page 109.
Villaggio Mancuso, Villaggio Racise,
Tirivolo, Buturo, Villaggio Palumbo.
Villaggio Mancuso is the
passage to the Sila Piccola coming
from Taverna and Buturo coming from Sersale.
They re all touristy resorts for high
mountain sports that consists most of
all of wooden houses, open all year and
equipped with all modern comforts for
summer and winter tourism. Here the Sila
shows up all its beauty, formed by verdant
plateaus that makes the high mountains
seem like hills and by magnificent age-old
woods of larch pinetrees (of the tertiary
period) beech-trees and fir-trees.
Skylletion-Scolacium Ruins.
On the SS 106 at about
one Km from Catanzaro Lido, driving to
Soverato, among the olive-groves there
s the Arcaelogical Area of Squillace,
also called Roccelletta di Borgia or
Roccelletta of the Squillace Bishop.
From 1965 the Antiquities Commission
has set up in this place excavations
to locate and study a Roman settlement
stood in 123-122 B.C. on the site of
Skyletion, town of Greek origin (96-98
A.D.) later called by Romans Scolacium.
They came to light so far the theatre,
the central area of the town and many
decorating statues and aculptures of
the Imperial Age. Not too far from this
area, maybe in the Norman period but
with Byzantine influence, later was built
the grand Basilica of St. Maria della
Roccella, of which we have now only the
ruin of the beautiful trlobate apse,
but that was, at its time, the biggest
religious building in Calabria.
The Ionic Coast from Soverato to Crotone.
For those who love sun
and sea, the sandy coast, easily covering
through the SS 106 from Catanzaro Lido
to Crotone, driving through Sellía
Marina, Crópani Marina, Botricello,
and Le Castella in which there are modern
touristy structures that offer the opportunity
of enjoying, with the maximum comfort,
the enchanted beauty of the sunny beaches.
Crópani.
Driving through the SS
106 near Cropani Marina, you have to
take the SS 180 to go up to Cropani.
Once arrived it s to be visited the
Duomo whose construction dates back to
the XV century and it s very important
for its façade and for its crossing
rose-window, as well as for its powerful
church-steeple whose original heighg
was 47 m (now it s 43m). The monument,
due to its size, its used as trigonometric
point for the valuation of agricultural
land and it s visible from Capo Rizzuto
to Squillace. In the inside it s kept
a fifteenth-century altar-piece representing
Our Lady of the Assumption; a XVIII century
great ceiling painting by Pasqualetti;
frescoes by Cristofaro Santanna (1764).
There s also a marble sculpture by Benedetto
Moiano (1588). You have to visit the
Churches of St. Caterina, St. Giovanni
Battista, St. Lucia and the Monastery
of Cappuccini, decorated with valuable
17° century paintings, plaster statues
and 18° century altars.
Zagaríse.
You can get to Zagarise
from Sellia Marina on the SS 106, exit
to Úria, or exit to La Petrizia,
direction Soveria Simeri. Of its past
times Zagarise keeps a Romanic-gothic
façade in silano granite with
a wide ogival portal surmounted by a
fretted rose-window of the Church of
Our Lady of the Assumption, supported
by a square bell tower of renaissance
age; ruins of a cylindrical tower of
medieval age in Gorizia St. and, in front
of it, the Church of the Ritiro in
the Monastery of Dominicans in which
there have recently discovered, behind
the walls, a series of frescoes dating
back to the XVI century; it s to be
admired the memorial plaque portal too.
In the parish building, behind the Church
of Our Lady of the Assumption, on the
initiative of the local dean, there s
the little but good Zagarise Museum.
Its collection is composed of thirty-six
paintings coming from the Church of the
Ritiro of Dominicans and from the
Church of Our Lady of the Assumption.
For those who study the restore of ancient paintings, it
s particularly interesting the comparison between the two
versions of the iconographic Madonna Divina Pastora both
dating back to the XIX century and attributed to Antonio
Giannetti, related to another identical icon painted in fresco
in the Curch of the Ritiro in Mesoraca (Kr).
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