Tropea Things to Do

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Tropea is the main villages in Costa degli Dei, one of the best seaside area in Italy...so it's a good think to make a tour....there are organize bus tour ( ask to your hotel or to the tourism office in the main road of Tropea), take a boat trip from the port of Tropea or other beach villages ( there are many) or rent a car and find a good map...it's seems there are many road, in fact there are only one pricipal road but the signs are 'not clear'.
The must to sea in this area is CApo VAticano: from this Cape you can have a perfect panorama on the Stretto di Messina, the narrow channel between Calabria and Sicily, the superb coast downstair with little beaches in the deep blue that you can get by feet with narrow track or by boat (pedalò - fiberglass boat where you can bike to go head - i don't know the name in english!) rented from the main organized beach nearby......
From costa degli dai n the clear day yo cna see the Eolie Island, in particular Stromboli!
I did the trip 10 years ago and I did it again this last sept. the places are beauty but the area are very exploted.....tons of residence, house for rent, holiday resort.......but in low season the trip is so nice!
FRom Zambrone big beach to the littel cove of Parghelia, from the town beach of Tropea to .........from Capo VAticano to Santa Maria di Ricadi.....the country meet the sea and th ecolour meet the light!

It is pleasant stroll up to the Chiesa dell'Isola, a church dedicated to seafarers, that sits on top of a rocky outcrop that juts out into the sea.Some believe that it rose on the site of a fourth-century Basilian cell; we know, however, that Pope Urban II assigned it to the Abbey of Montecassino in 1077. Rebuilt in Gothic style and consecrated on 23 April, 1397, it underwent various works of restoration over the centuries and was definitively rebuilt after the disastrous earthquake of 1905. The facade is remarkable, decorated with horizontal stripes and containing three majestic round-arched doorways. Beneath the porticoes frescoes can be admired that depict episodes related to the history of the coenoby and an epigraph that records the reconstruction. Inside, there is a fourteenth-century marble tomb, with a figured relief, perhaps attributable to the Mileto Master or to one of his pupils and various other fine statues. Once the famous wooden crucifix, better known as the Black Christ, was kept in the church, but now this fifteenth-century work of great value is in the cathedral.

In the area of Torre Galli, inland of Tropea, a Pre-Hellenic necropolis was unearthed, dating back to the late Iron Age, whose remains proved to be of great importance for an understanding of the Italian community in the period immediately preceding Greek colonisation. The 336 graves, mostly inhumations, provided a great deal of funerary apparel, among which bowls, cups, earthenware jars, cloth weights, necklaces, buckles, and weapons of different kinds. In the Annunziata area, in the cemetery, another native Iron Age necropolis was discovered: this time a mixed rite burial, from which much funerary apparel was recovered. Inside one of the tombs a very interesting bi-conical cinerary urn of the proto-Villanovian , that testifies to the penetration of the Villanovian culture in this area in the protohistoric period. Inland from the town, specifically on the Santa Domenica farm, the remains of Greek and roman buildings were unearthed along with various silver coins from the Roman republican age. On Capo Vaticano on the Brattirò farm traces of a Latin settlement were found, while near Torre Lunga finally, were found a paleo-Christian catacomb and various fragments of proto-Christian tombal inscriptions.

Tropea has on e of the most interesting and beautiful Historic Centres in the whole of Calabria. Slightly damaged by the disastrous seventeenth and eighteenth-century earthquakes, it has kept its origin urban physiognomy of almost integral buildings from those centuries. Here noblemen's houses of great beauty and architectural value can be admired, typified by local stone doorways. Then there is a maze of porticoes, courtyards, luxuriant gardens, steep steps and quaint lanes that run up to lovely, elegant small squares. Notable from an architectural point of view, the so-called Seat of the Nobles (Sedile dei Nobili), a fine seventeenth-century building with a wealth of baroque decoration and a granite facade, it is currently being restored. The eighteenth-century Tocco mansion should also be seen, with its Baroque facade, rustic doorway, stone balustrade and corbels, and noteworthy eighteenth-century wrought iron balconies. Also the Toraldo mansion should be mentioned, a lovely aristocratic home with a fine stone doorway. The so-called 'Belisario wall' is also fascinating, that is, the remains of the town walls that once protected Tropea, perhaps dating back to 1000 AD, at least the lower part; unfortunately, the arch behind the Norman cathedral is badly damaged and the small service building situated on the upper part of the wall.

The Cathedral - a sixteenth century Norman temple - where all the faithful of the town gather, was probably built on the ruins of an ancient church of Greek rite. According to a citizen of Tropea and the author of "Il Crocifisso nero dei Vescovado di Tropea" (1922), marquis Felice Toraldo, the cathedral was built in the fifteenth century and inaugurated on 20 November 1496. It was seriously damaged during the 1905 earthquake, which destroyed the greater part and was restored between the years 1927-1931 with various alterations to the structure and the Baroque decorations and thus brought back almost to its traditional artistic form, apart from the floor. The silver-framed painting of the dark-skinned Madonna of Romania is exhibited on the high altar. The eighth century Byzantine-style Madonna, painted on a cedar panel was, according to tradition, saved from the wrath of the iconoclastic heresy and she is, to this day, venerated by the entire Catholic population of the city. Following a Vatican decree of 9 September 1877, the sacred image wears a gold crown which was donated by the citizens. The famous "Black Crucifix" can be found in the second chapel but there is no reference to the author of this interesting, wood-carved, almost life-sized crucifix.