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Updated: June 5, 2025
Our own day beholds a counter movement; the shore line of railway will create new towns on the old deserted sites. Such a settlement is the Marina of Catanzaro, a little port at the mouth of a wide valley, along which runs a line to Catanzaro itself, or rather to the foot of the great hill on which the town is situated.
Think of what one may in day-time on this far southern shore, its nights are sacred to the poets of Hellas. In rounding Cape Spartivento, I strained my eyes through the moonlight unhappily a waning moon, which had shone with full orb the evening I ascended to Catanzaro to see the Sicilian mountains; at length they stood up darkly against the paler night.
Even the subject of earthquakes proved soporific. Impossible to find oneself at Catanzaro without thinking of earthquakes; I wonder that the good people of Coltrone did not include this among deterrents whereby they sought to prejudice me against the mountain town. Over and over again Catanzaro has been shaken to its foundations.
I declared to him at length that I could endure no longer this dreary life of the sick-room; I must get into the open air, and, if no harm came of the experiment, I should leave for Catanzaro. "I cannot prevent you," was the Doctor's reply, "but I am obliged to point out that you act on your own responsibility. It is pericoloso, it is pericolosissimo! The terrible climate of the mountains!"
There, however, stood the diligenza which was somehow to convey me to Catanzaro; I watched its loading with luggage-merchandise and mail-bags whilst the exquisite evening melted into night.
The town has certain industries, especially the manufacture of silk; one feels an atmosphere of well-being; mendicancy is a rare thing. Fruits abounded, and were very cheap; if one purchased from a stall the difficulty was to carry away the abundance offered for one's smallest coin. Excellent oranges cost about a penny the half-dozen. Any one who is fond of the prickly fig should go to Catanzaro.
After that comes Catanzaro and the valley of the Corace, the narrowest point of the Italian continent, and then the heights of Serra and Aspromonte, the true "Italy" of old, that continue as far as Reggio. Though I passed through some noble groves of chestnut on the way up, the country here was a treeless waste.
Once more I make my grateful acknowledgements to the excellent Don Pasquale. Speaking of shops, I must describe in detail the wonderful pharmacy. Signor Cricelli held it among the sights of Catanzaro; this chemist's in the main street was one of the first places to which he guided me. And, indeed, the interior came as a surprise.
His life was promised him on condition of his delivering up Conrad of Catanzaro, one of his relatives, accused of conspiring against Andre. The grand admiral committed this act of shameless treachery, and did not shrink from sending his own son to persuade Conrad to come to the town. The poor wretch was given over to the king, and tortured alive on a wheel made with sharp knives.
You must choose Sunday for Tiriolo, on account of the girls, whose pretty faces and costumes are worth coming any distance to see. A good proportion of them have the fair hair which seems to have been eliminated, in other parts of the country, through the action of malaria. Viewed from Catanzaro, one of the hills of Tiriolo looks like a broken volcanic crater.
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