Cicala

Cicala sits in the Reventino mountain community, in the northern Catanzaro province, on foothills closer in feel to the Sila than to the Catanzaro coast thirty kilometers south. Neolithic finds in the surrounding territory predate the modern village by thousands of years, but the settlement as it stands today dates to when the men of the locality of Trempa di Castagna asked the count for permission to start a hamlet. The new village took his surname, slightly altered, first Cigala and then Cicala.

The commune divides by function more than by geography: the centro storico holds the stone houses and the parish church at its highest point, while the woods on the eastern side supply the chestnuts and grazing that still shape the small economy of agriculture and livestock. The village is part of Borghi Autentici d'Italia. A place whose name records a land grant, whose economy still runs on the woods that grant opened up, and whose recent recognition for dementia care marks one of the few modern additions to an otherwise old and unchanged pattern of life.