Borgia

The town carries the surname of a family: the Borgias, and more precisely Giovan Battista Borgia, prince of Squillace, who in 1547 allowed it to be rebuilt on a safer and healthier site after the Turks had laid it waste. Earlier still, when between the seventh and the eighth century the Roman city of Scolacium was abandoned because of Saracen raids and malaria, the people had moved inland, to a village called Palagorio: the Greeks used that name for the villages they had found already there when they arrived.

The earthquake of 1783 destroyed almost everything and cut down the population. Borgia was rebuilt a little further off with the funds of the Cassa Sacra, and the design was signed by the architect Vincenzo Ferraresi, who chose flat ground and laid out the town according to the enlightened ideas of the time: two main avenues and regular parallel streets. On the coast, among the olive trees, the theatre and amphitheatre of Scolacium remain, and the basilica of Santa Maria della Roccella.