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.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover

Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.

Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.

Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.

Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.

Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.
