Tropea
Historic Clifftop Town On The Coast Of The Gods, With The Former Monastery Church Of Santa Maria Dell'Isola On Its Offshore Rock · Tropea, Calabria
Tropea is an old town sitting on top of a sandstone cliff with the sea directly underneath it, and the thing everyone photographs is a former monastery on its own rock just offshore, joined to the beach by a causeway and reached up a long flight of steps cut into the stone. The water below is the clearest on the Italian mainland, pale over white sand, and on a clear evening you can see Stromboli smoking on the horizon about sixty kilometres out. The town above is a small grid of alleys and balconies with a Norman cathedral in it and a viewing terrace at the end of almost every street. Calabria is the least visited region on the mainland and this is the one place in it with an international name, so it is busy in August and almost empty either side. The red onions are not a gimmick; they are sweet enough to eat raw and the town sells very little else. Come in June or September and you get the same water at half the August price, with the staircases to the beach to yourself.
Largo Duomo 1, Tropea, Calabria, 89861, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: beaches and the old town terraces are public and never close. Santa Maria dell'Isola opens daily in season with a midday interval and reduced or no winter opening. The cathedral opens daily with a long early-afternoon interval. Boat trips and the Aeolian hydrofoil are summer-only and weather-dependent. MOST OF THE TOWN'S HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS CLOSE FROM ABOUT NOVEMBER TO MARCH. Confirm the season before booking anything out of summer.