Crotone Italy

Italy

Pythagoras taught here. That is reason enough to look differently at this Calabrian coast that comes into focus as the ship approaches: Crotone was, twenty-seven centuries ago, one of the mightiest cities of Greater Greece, home to Olympic athletes and physicians renowned throughout the ancient world. The modern city has grown over it, without erasing the traces. The port-call consists precisely in recovering them, among a Spanish castle, a museum filled with votive gold and a headland where a solitary column keeps watch.

From the Wharf to the Old City: Minutes' Walk

Ships dock at the Banchina di Riva, about 250 metres from the centre. Descending the gangway, your eye catches at once on the massive walls of Charles V's Castle, crowning the hill where the Greek acropolis and then medieval fortifications succeeded one another. Its two round towers and bastions tell of the era when Calabrian coasts feared incursions from the sea. From the ramparts, the view embraces the port, closely-set roofs and the Ionian stretching to the horizon.

Lanes, Cathedral and Black Madonna

Below the castle, the old city unrolls a maze of lanes where laundry dries between balconies and conversations pass from window to window. The cathedral merits pushing its door: behind a sober façade, it preserves the icon of the Madonna Nera di Capo Colonna, a Black Virgin venerated for centuries and carried in procession each year toward the cape that gives her name. Around it, cafés and shops live at Calabrian pace, with the day's focus in the morning, when inhabitants shop among fish stalls and produce vendors.

Hera's Treasure at the Archaeological Museum

A few streets farther, the National Archaeological Museum gathers what the soil of ancient Kroton has yielded: ceramics, bronzes, ex-voto and especially the treasure of the sanctuary of Hera Lacinia, with its gold diadem of surprising finesse. The rooms are traversed in an hour and give full meaning to the rest of the day. There you understand the wealth of this colony founded by Achaean Greeks around 710 before our era, famous for its victories at the ancient Olympic Games, including those of the legendary wrestler Milon of Crotone.

Capo Colonna: The Column Facing the Sea

About ten kilometres south, accessible by taxi or excursion, Capo Colonna's archaeological park occupies a headland swept by sea spray. Of the great Doric temple of Hera Lacinia, which once guided sailors, only one column remains, raised facing the open sea. This solitary silhouette, surrounded by the sanctuary's foundations and Mediterranean scrub, composes the port-call's strongest image. Travellers with more time sometimes push on to Le Castella, where an Aragonese fortress seems to float on its islet, in the heart of the Capo Rizzuto Marine Reserve.

Calabrese Flavours Before Returning

The return to port allows time for a gourmet pause. Calabria loves emphatic characters: spicy 'nduja, goat cheeses, homemade pasta with seafood, all accompanied by a glass of Cirò, one of Italy's oldest vineyards, cultivated north of the city. Terraces near the waterfront allow keeping an eye on fishing boats returning, nets stacked at the stern.

Climbing back aboard, you carry the memory of a city that was a beacon of Greek thought and that lives simply today, without pretension. The cape's column slowly disappears in the wake. It has kept watch over this shore for two and a half millennia; it will wait without difficulty for your return.