The seaside ‘Village of Villages’ that the Italians keep secret
Although it possesses all the characteristics of a perfect laid-back holiday spot, few British tourists have discovered charming Tropea, says Kate Wickers
On balmy summer evenings in the southern Italian town of Tropea – the “Pearl of Calabria” – a crowd gathers beside the 17th-century cannon in the eponymous Piazza del Cannone, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. As the sun dips, the sky turns the shade of a Calabrian clementine, and all gazes are drawn to the glowing sandstone walls of Santa Maria dell’Isola, a 6th-century Benedictine monastery. Sitting atop a rocky outlet, it typically serves as the pin-up image for Tropea tourism – though on clear days, it’s the ever-smoking volcanic Aeolian island of
Stromboli, 35 miles across the water, that steals the show.
Tropea is probably the most beautiful Italian town you’ve never heard of, even taking Italy’s much-coveted Borgo dei Borghi (“Village of Villages”) crown in 2021. And yet its relative remoteness – perched almost at the toe of Italy’s boot – has kept it off the well-beaten tourist trail. Visit in summer and you’ll be mostly in the company of northern Italian holidaymakers (who help to keep standards high – no overcooked pasta or soggybottomed pizza here), though it is in spring, when local shops raise their shutters after the long winter, and autumn – when temperatures hover in the low-20s – that the town is at its loveliest.
This rugged coastline is known as the Costa degli Dei (Coast of the Gods), and is a place defined in every sense by the sea. Viewed from a distance (best done by boat), imposing pink- and apricothued stone residences rise from 250ft-high granite cliffs, which throw shadows over the spearmint-tinted water.
Myth has it that Hercules – having completed his 12 labours – came dripping from the sea to establish the town, which he named Forum Herculis. The first traces of human settlement here date from the Neolithic period, and in the 3rd century BC, the Romans snatched Tropea from the Greeks, who had colonised Calabria in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Take a wander with Dario Godano, a local archaeologist, through Tropea’s oldest quarter, beginning at the striking Norman cathedral built at the end of the 11th century, popping in to see the two unexploded Second World War bombs that could, had they detonated, have wiped out the town (the credit for dodging that disaster goes to the town’s patron saint, Our Lady of Romania).
From here, there’s a jumble of lanes lined with grand palazzi built in the 18th century, when 80 noble families rubbed shoulders in Tropea. Look out for the grotesques sculpted over doors, intended to ward off evil (and unwanted neighbours).
Down on the town’s public beach, there’s a pleasingly 1950s feel, with men strutting in Speedos, women in floral swimming caps striking out into the water, and families hunched around picnics of arancini alla ’nduja, made with Calabria’s famous spicy sausage and Tropea’s celebrated sweet red onions.
Back on the clifftop lies the small (though soon to be expanding) and slightly eccentric Museum of the Sea, located in a corner of the Santa Chiara Convent. Treasures within include the world’s most complete skeleton of a Metaxytherium (an extinct genus of dugong), and the planet’s second-oldest shark tooth.
When it’s time to stop for a glass of the local Greco di Bianco, head for the terrace of the family-run Il Marchese – a perfect spot from which to watch local life trickle by below over a plate of fileja (chewy pasta). Dessert should be saved for the Gelateria Nonna Rosa, where experts shape mandarin and pistachio ice cream into wave-like peaks. In Tropea, all things truly do begin and end with the sea.