The best hiking routes in Calabria
Region you go, mountains you find. We continue our outdoor journey in Southern Italy and Campania, moving to Calabria, another region famous for its coasts and its good food, but which is able to offer some really fascinating routes for those who love living outdoors, with boots at the feet, the backpack on the shoulder and a few Bivo envelopes as emergency food.
Stromboli
We left Campania with a wonderful trekking on Mount Vesuvius and the first route we recommend in Calabria is on Stromboli, an island of volcanic nature. The 3-4 hour itinerary takes place along sloping lanes and tiers that, meter by meter, offer truly fascinating panoramic points of the Aeolian archipelago. The best time to tackle this route is the late afternoon so as to appreciate from the top a fantastic Calabrian sunset. From the top of Pizzo it is also possible to see the Sciara del Fuoco, an area of hundreds of meters in which lava fountains rise up that surprise us with explosions made by rains of lapilli and ash. To carry out this trek, within everyone’s reach, it is necessary to be accompanied by an authorized local guide and that the route, carried out in the summer at high temperatures, is not recommended for the less trained and for children. If, on the other hand, you intend to walk the road at night, the difficulty is considerably greater even if the spectacle offered by Nature is certainly breathtaking.
The Aspromonte
The Aspromonte is a massif of the Calabrian Apennines located in the southern part of the Region in the province of Reggio Calabria, limited to the east by the Ionian Sea and the West by the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The route we are proposing is centered on Gallicianò, a small Hellenophone village in the Grecanica area of Aspromonte. In the village you will be able to immerse yourself in an ancient civilization in which the ethnographic museum and an orthodox church on the summit of the town find space. To reach Gallicianò you must take the path n.128 from Bivo and go past the river. Here begins a journey that will take you to the ancient Santa Maria of Greece; near the Fountain of Love begins a path that runs along the valley and climbs the Amendolea river that accompanies the hiker along the entire route, during which the ancient villages on the slopes of the Aspromonte begin to appear. On the way back there are monumental chestnut trees and old houses, pastures and cultivated fields.
One of the most popular routes in the Calabrian area, about 10 kilometers long, is the Path of the Greeks. This route was used in the Magna Graecia era by the Locrians to reach the Tyrrhenian Sea and in particular the colonies of Medma (the current Rosarno) and Ipponion (Vibo Valentia). The trail starts in Mammola and will lead you to the Passo della Limina passing through the famous sanctuary of San Nicodemo.
The WWF oasis of Cozzo del Pesco
Above Rossano Calabro, at an altitude of about 1000 meters, there is an area of about 8 hectares of WWF dominated by maples and chestnut trees, some of which have impressive dimensions and an estimated age of 800 years.
To visit the oasis from Rossano you will have to take the road that will lead you first to the Italian-Byzantine monastery of the Patirion, a suggestive religious building unique in its kind, and later to the oasis. Along the way you will be able to see the 103 centuries-old chestnuts, with very particular shapes and able to accommodate different people.
The park of the Sila Grande
La Sila is a vast mountain area located in the center of Calabria in the provinces of Cosenza, Crotone and Catanzaro, rich in very thick woods in which wolves live permanently and which in the autumn season are filled with porcini mushrooms. It is an area that is located in the deep South but that in winter, covered by a thick layer of snow, is very reminiscent of Scandinavian landscapes.
The first itinerary we propose is a snowshoe hike through the Perilli Hills, thanks to which you can relive a sense of uncontaminated nature belonging to another era. The itinerary begins in Caporosa and continues along a narrow road with a natural background lined with pines and beeches of young age and continues along paths and continuous crossings of streams up to a more mature forest area, at the end of which you arrive at the conical top of the Colli Perilli. From here you can enjoy an exceptional view of the entire surrounding area.
Another path that we can recommend, certainly easier than the previous one, is the Cupone path. It is a path suitable for everyone with a minimum height difference recommended for families due to the presence of numerous educational signs explaining in full the botanical species present in the area and also the possibility of visiting the Naturalistic Museum, the Geological Park, the ancient sawmill and the Botanical Garden, the flagships of this national park.
Another resource that certainly deserves to be visited is the Fallistro Nature Reserve which houses some ancient vegetable formations of the legendary Selva Bruzia, including the larch pine Poiret, one of the giants of the Sila.
