I had been in Calabria for less than 24 hours when I found myself standing in an artist's bottega in the town of Pizzo and listening to Antonio Montesanti talk about the Greek hero Achilles. Just outside the door, cars and Vespas vroomed past, but as this cheery straw-hatted painter and ceramist talked about his Southern Italian region's deep connection with the distant Mediterranean past, the cars became chariots and the scooters morphed into mules.
In this part of Calabria, Antonio explained, fishermen still scratch a crosshatched pattern with their nails on the cheeks of the swordfish they catch. They do this—he informed me in a matter-of-fact way, as if recounting what he'd had for lunch—to free the souls of Achilles's loyal warriors, the Myrmidons, who transformed into these sleek, powerful silver-blue fish after the death of their commander.
Later the same day I was driving through an amiably ramshackle town called Nicotera with my German Calabrian guide, Liane Scherf. Nicotera is famous as the town that “taught the world to eat,” after being chosen in 1957 as one of the earliest data-collection centers for research into what would become known as the Mediterranean diet. After lunch on a hot July day, it felt more like the town that taught the world to have a siesta. The only sign of life came when we stopped at a pedestrian crossing for three young boys, 10 or 11 years old at a guess. The two in front were almost nine feet tall. Their hands were empty dishwashing gloves, and their heads were cardboard boxes. They bowed to our car, arms flailing, then whirled away up a steep lane. The regular-size kid that followed in their wake kept up a constant rat-a-tat on his drum.
Rather than being hunched over their game consoles, these guys were reenacting a legend that—according to Liane—dates back to the early Middle Ages, featuring a Catholic maiden called Mata and a Muslim prince called Grifone. In processions held on local feast days, Mata and Grifone become giant papier-mâché figures that are paraded through the streets. But this was not a feast day in Nicotera. Also: The boys' “Giganti”—swaying precariously on wooden chairs that the two out front held propped on their shoulders—were clearly homemade. It looked very much like they were playing at Mata and Grifone for no good reason other than the sheer joy of the thing.
“Calabria is Sicily 20 years ago,” says Gary Portuesi of Authentic Explorations, the luxury travel outfitter with whom I am exploring this wonderful and often overlooked southern region. I have met him and his partner, Calabrian native Marco Palermo, later that night in Villa Paola, just outside Tropea. Gary is excited about Calabria and was eager to share his enthusiasm with someone like me, who knows Italy well (it's where I live) but has never visited the region, aside from a memorably slow drive from Sicily to Naples all of four decades ago. Sicily is where Gary's family is from, and he helped launch the island's new, high-end tourist wave when he founded what was then called Authentic Sicily in 2002. Calabria, Gary tells me, “is the perfect destination for anyone looking for that ‘other’ Italian experience that nobody knows.”
The Calabria some outside Italy do already know is the Costa degli Dei, or Coast of the Gods, a 34-mile stretch of Tyrrhenian shore from Pizzo to Nicotera (think of it as the knuckle on the Calabrian toe), where long white beaches alternate with impervious cliffs and rocky coves. Tropea is this wild promontory's most celebrated resort town and the only municipality in the entire region where foreign visitors far outnumber Italians.
Tropea deserves its reputation. It's a handsome place of solid sandstone palazzi, built by the many noble families that chose the town as their residence over the centuries. Before dinner, walking with Liane, Gary, and Marco through narrow streets and hidden piazzas invaded by trattoria tables, we peered through ancient arched gates into covetable private courtyards and ducked into the medieval cathedral with its delightful 12th-century altar painting of the Virgin Mary and her baby enjoying a cuddle. We ended up on the steep seaward edge of the historic center just in time to see the sun set over the island of Stromboli, around 30 nautical miles to the west. Later we sampled—among other delights—swordfish chunks in a delicate elderflower marinade at Le Mura, a restaurant whose alfresco garden is cupped within the folds of the city's Byzantine-era walls.
You could happily vacation in Tropea without your own set of wheels: It's an hour's taxi ride from Lamezia Terme International Airport and is also reachable by train from Rome or Naples. The best places to stay here, like handsome, airy boutique hotel Villa Paola, are an easy shuttle ride or energetic walk away from the center. But if you've come this far, it would be a shame not to explore more of Calabria's coast and rugged hinterland. And for this a car is pretty much essential.
Actually, strike that. Add Reggio Calabria to the list of Calabrian destinations that are probably better visited without a car. On the day of bright blue skies when Marco and I drove in, we must have circled past the city's famous gelato bar Cesare about half a dozen times before we finally gave up the search for a curbside space and parked in a private garage. Calabria's most populous city, Reggio stands at the very tip of the region's toe, placidly regarding Sicily and the puffing cone of Mount Etna across the Straits of Messina from its elegant tree-lined waterfront promenade. Today most visitors come to view the Riace Bronzes. These two majestic ancient Greek statues of warriors from the fifth century BCE were discovered buried in the seabed off Calabria's southern coast in 1972 by a diver. The star attraction of the local archaeological museum, they are miracles of sculpted strength and quiet authority, the kind of artworks that have you unconsciously tensing your abs.
Reggio is the tipping point between Calabria's two coastlines. From here, if you're not getting a boat to Sicily, you can either head north and then northeast up Italy's Tyrrhenian shore toward Tropea, Naples, and eventually Rome, or chart a course south and then east along the instep of the Southern Italian foot to reach Puglia. Opt for the latter and you will inevitably spend a lot of time on the notoriously slow SS106 highway, driving though a jumble of dusty, strung-out seaside towns that cater mostly to Italian vacationers. Eventually, however, the sandy beaches with their family-oriented beach clubs give way to a spectacular stretch of rugged coastline that centers on the marine reserve of Capo Rizzuto. Hiding here in plain sight amid the private condominiums of Praialonga, not so distant in their eclectic seaside style from those of Sardinia's Costa Smeralda, the 32-room Praia Art Resort is Calabria's most stylish barefoot luxury hotel, where hammocks are suspended above the waves that lap the shore.
The conventional wisdom is that there's not much to do on this Ionian side of Calabria except go to the beach or maybe visit the overgrown remains of ancient Greek colonies like Locri or Sybaris. But who needs conventional wisdom? Much more useful, in Calabria, is access to a local like Marco, whose family comes from a town so happily Ionian it calls itself Gioiosa Ionica. Without Marco I would never have found family restaurant La Collinetta in the hilltop hamlet of Martone, where chef-owner Pino Trimboli serves the restaurant's own organic pasta on terra-cotta roof tiles instead of plates, in true Calabrian farmworker style (my tagliolini with porcini mushrooms was a sapid umami bomb).
Neither, I'm pretty sure, would I have made my way to the hill town of San Floro, where Nido di Seta, a cooperative founded in 2013, has planted more than 3,000 mulberry trees and revived the area's ancient tradition of organic-silk production. Calabria once exported silk all over Europe, but by the end of the 19th century, the trade had all but disappeared. I learned three things in San Floro: that I could spend hours watching dappled sunlight filter through the leaves of a Calabrian mulberry grove; that the brittle, rustling sound of 20,000 silkworms munching their way through what amounts to over a thousand pounds of leaves each month is so uncanny I'm surprised Hitchcock never used it in a film (or did he?); and that I am no good at all at weaving silk on an ancient handloom. Today Nido di Seta make its own scarves, dresses, and other items from the 90 pounds of organic Calabrian silk it produces each year, which can be purchased from a small store on its farm after a tour of the silk museum, mulberry groves, and feeding room. In 2023 the cooperative began supplying silk to fashion house Gucci—quite a coup for a region that is more used to exporting luxury talents, including Gianni Versace, than luxury goods. The Milanese fashion kingpin was born in Reggio Calabria and began his career at his mother's dressmaking atelier.
It's these backcountry forays that make Calabria such a joy for old Italy hands keen to find still-undiscovered corners of the country. On day six of my sojourn, I plucked up the courage to strike out on my own, hired an e-bike, and headed inland from the Praia Art Resort through a landscape of deep dry gullies colonized by great spears of giant fennel. At one point I had the distinct impression that I was pedaling through a Dr. Seuss book.
I stopped in the hilltop village of Santa Severina and found myself alone in a handsome piazza that in Tuscany would have required me to slalom through the selfie takers. But the real revelation came on the way back, in Cutro, an unprepossessing concrete straggle of a town that, I guessed, did not see too many tourists. Here, in need of a low-temperature sugar rush, I slammed on the brakes outside a gelateria called K2, darted inside, and ordered a cone with my two go-to flavors: coffee and stracciatella. Oh! The stracciatella was just as it should be but so rarely is: creamy fior di latte studded with great chunks of dark chocolate. The caffè tasted like it had just come out of a Gaggia machine and been magically turned to ice cream, except that, not content with this conjuring act, they'd then dusted it with a snowfall of hazelnut crumble. I had other fine gelato experiences in Calabria. I discovered, for example, that the exuberant Franco di Iorgi of Bar Gelateria Ercole in Pizzo—which vies with Bar Dante across the town's main square for the favors of tartufo ice cream aficionados—also does a knockout strawberry granita. But K2 was my Everest.
Gelato is not Calabria's only foodie draw. You might not get on a plane to go eat onions—but wait to make that call until you have dipped a spoon into the exquisite onion mousse made from Tropea's famously sweet cipolla rossa variety at the Delizie Vaticane farm shop a little way out of town. Once known mainly for its hearty country trattorias and beachside seafood joints, Calabria is also now a fine-dining destination, with a scatter of Michelin stars.
One of the first and most consistent of these starry tables is Dattilo, on the Ceraudo family farm and organic winery a 30-minute drive north of Crotone on Calabria's Ionian coast. On the summer evening I dined there, on an outdoor terrace beneath jasmine-draped walls, the two principal tasting menus both began with one of chef Caterina Ceraudo's signature starters. The first was a lightly fried phyllo pastry “sfogliatella” shell filled with two ingredients that are flag bearers for genuine Calabrian flavors, caciocavallo podolico cheese and sardella, a spicy whitebait, peperoncino, and wild fennel seed paste that is sometimes referred to in this region as il caviale dei poveri, “the caviar of the poor.” It was a tasty start to a very memorable meal but also a statement of intent from a young chef deeply committed to Calabria's remarkable range of natural produce.
An endearing aspect of this spectacular but also sometimes gnarly region, where exquisite Byzantine churches and ugly unfinished concrete blocks stand cheek by jowl, is the way even those who work in the tourist industry don't always realize what they're sitting on. Elisa Loiacono, who handles sales and business development for the group that owns Villa Paola and its sister hotels—contemporary spa resort Capovaticano Resort & Spa and relaxed, family-oriented Baia del Sole—mentioned that she and friends like to eat at a place called Le Breste in the village of Brattirò, just inland from Tropea. But she did so in a way that suggested that visitors from abroad might not quite get it.
Le Breste turned out to be an absolute delight. Not only was it a good-looking rural property, complete with cute rural-chic guest rooms that had been restored using ancient, sustainable techniques (le breste are local adobe bricks made from mud and wheat husks). But the Stromboli sunset views, the tasty heirloom dishes like fileja pasta with Tropea onions, a wine list that highlights an ever-growing group of regional producers who are working with native grape varieties, service that was sweet, genuine, and prompt—all this made me marvel that four of us had managed to get a booking on a warm July evening at less than an hour's notice. It also made me realize that in Calabria there are still places of this caliber, which can often feel like the hardest thing to find in Italy: the places where, as Elisa put it, “only we locals go.”
How to visit Calabria
Gary Portuesi, Marco Palermo, and their team at Authentic Explorations, longtime experts at putting together trips that get at the heart of Italy, launched itineraries into Calabria in summer 2025. This six-night journey through the region was fittingly called Savoring & Unveiling Calabria, a grazing safari that samples regional specialties like swordfish, Calabrian chiles, the cipolla rossa (red onion), and Tartufo di Pizzo, the traditional ball of gelato covered in a shell of chocolate or hazelnuts. Other activities for a customized itinerary can include hikes in national parks, visits to wineries and bergamot groves, amaro tastings, and boat excursions along the Costa degli Dei. Portuesi and Palermo recommend a visit of at least five nights, within the window of April through October.
Where to eat in Calabria
At Le Mura in Tropea, savor a pizza with a side of views, or hit Delizie Vaticane for picnic essentials like cheese, salumi, and mousse di cipolla (a salty-sweet spread made of the regional onion) to nosh on at Spiaggia della Contura, the town's less-crowded beach. Go 30 minutes east along the coast into Pizzo for gelato at either Bar Galeteria Ercole or Bar Dante on the Piazza della Repubblica. There's also K2 in the tiny town of Cutro. For a taste of the region's Caciocavallo cheese and nduja, check out La Collinetta in Martone. As for Michelin-starred meals, Dattilo serves a nine-course tasting menu created by chef Caterina Ceraudo at her family's agriturismo estate, where you can stay overnight just four miles east of Strongoli. Le Breste in Brattirò also has rooms to sleep off dinner.
Where to stay in Calabria
Check in to Praialonga's 32-key Praia Art Resort with its poolside seafood restaurant and a private white-sand beach along the Ionian Sea. The elegant Villa Paola has terraces where guests can take aperitivi as well as vegetable patches where the hotel's Ristorante De' Minimi sources lemons, tomatoes, and Tropea red onions. Its sibling properties to the south boast enviable seaside spots: Baia Del Sole in Torre Ruffa and Capovaticano Resort Thalasso Spa in Ricadi, both with smart beach clubs along the sun-kissed Costa degli Dei.
This article appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.