Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Calabria
12 towns
Calabria holds 12 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Cosenza, Vibo Valentia, and Catanzaro provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Corigliano-Rossano, Roseto Capo Spulico, and Rocca Imperiale. 9 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cariati
Province: Cosenza · 76 m
A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its ramparts among the most intact in southern Italy.
Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza · 10 m
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, backed by mountains and facing an offshore island.
Villapiana
Province: Cosenza · 206 m
An Ionian commune where the Sibari plain meets the first slopes rising toward Pollino.
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.
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.
Soverato
Province: Catanzaro · 10 m
The wealthiest town per capita in Calabria, built around a white-sand stretch on the Ionian shore.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.