Coastal towns
Coastal towns in Calabria
17 towns
Towns on the sea. A cliff town high above the water counts here rather than under mountains, because the sea is why you would go.
Fiumefreddo Bruzio
Province: Cosenza · 220 m
A Tyrrhenian hill town under Monte Cocuzzo, with a thirteenth-century castle frescoed in the 1990s.
Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza · 219 m
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018 from two older towns, one built around a Norman castle and the other around a Byzantine manuscript tradition.
Roseto Capo Spulico
Province: Cosenza · 217 m
A castle on a rock above the Ionian, in a village that began as a satellite of Sybaris in the seventh century BC.
Rocca Imperiale
Province: Cosenza · 210 m
Frederick II's Hohenstaufen fortress at the Calabria–Basilicata border, a Borgo più Bello d'Italia perched on a hill above the Ionian coast, with the castello at the summit and the locally-grown limone di Rocca Imperiale IGP scenting the orchards.
Villapiana
Province: Cosenza · 206 m
An Ionian commune where the Sibari plain meets the first slopes rising toward Pollino.
Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza · 150 m
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its castle set on the highest coastal hill above a convent that has kept a saint's relics for three centuries.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza · 110 m
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.
Scilla
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 91 m
Homer's sea-monster headland on the Costa Viola, the Castello Ruffo on the cliff above Chianalea and the swordfish boats working the Strait below.
Isola di Capo Rizzuto
Province: Crotone · 90 m
A promontory on the Ionian coast wrapped by Italy's largest marine reserve, with an Aragonese castle standing on a rock offshore.
Cariati
Province: Cosenza · 76 m
A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its ramparts among the most intact in southern Italy.
Trebisacce
Province: Cosenza · 73 m
A Bronze Age plateau above the Ionian Sea whose name comes from the Greek for small table, with a Byzantine mother church below.
Parghelia
Province: Vibo Valentia · 70 m
A 1,300-person village on the Costa degli Dei at 70 meters, four kilometers from Tropea and quieter than its famous neighbour.
Bagnara Calabra
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 50 m
A swordfish town on the Costa Viola where boats with lookout masts still hunt the Strait, and the IGP torrone has been made by hand since the eighteenth century.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia · 50 m
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Pizzo
Province: Vibo Valentia · 44 m
A tuff-cliff town over the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, where a king was shot in 1815 and the tartufo gelato was invented a century later.
Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza · 10 m
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, backed by mountains and facing an offshore island.
Soverato
Province: Catanzaro · 10 m
The wealthiest town per capita in Calabria, built around a white-sand stretch on the Ionian shore.
The slow-trip planner
Plan a slow trip across the towns travelers skip.
Answer five questions. We will shape a geographically coherent slow trip from the 1,000 Italian towns most travelers skip. Yours to save and share.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Ascea
Province: Salerno
Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.