Scilla

Scilla sits on the Scilleo promontory at the northern end of the Strait of Messina, on the Tyrrhenian Costa Viola in the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria. The town spreads around the Castello Ruffo, the fortress whose origins reach back to the fifth century and which the Ruffo family rebuilt to its present form in the fifteenth. Homer set the episode of Scylla and Charybdis here in the Odyssey; local tradition places the monster on the rock the castle now occupies.

Below the cliff to the north, the fishing district of Chianalea, member of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, runs as a single line of houses with their walls plunging straight into the sea. The swordfish boats with their distinctive tall watchtowers and long bow walkways still work the Strait between May and September, an artisanal hunt that has continued in these waters for centuries. Sicily is visible across the water on most days.