Feroleto Antico

The comune lies at the narrowest point of Italy, on the isthmus of Catanzaro, exactly at the centre of Calabria: from some of its hamlets you can see the gulf of Sant'Eufemia. On the name there are two explanations, and further apart they could not be: either it comes from the Latin ferula, the cane, because the area was full of them and above all the banks of the torrents that bound the village were; or from Feroletum, which would mean bearer of death. The settlement probably arose around the ninth century, when peoples of Ausonian or Oenotrian origin moved away from the coast to escape the Saracen raids and chose a place protected by natural barriers, which they then fortified with walls and a castle. Since then the earth has shaken it often: the earthquake of 28 March 1638 razed it to the ground and the village was rebuilt; in 1783 and again in 1905 the damage reached the eighth degree of the Mercalli scale, and in the last case fracturing of the ground and water coming out of it were reported.

A few kilometres from the built-up area, on a green hill, stands the sanctuary of Dipodi, a small church alone in the middle of the landscape. According to an old Greek chronicle it was built by the emperor Constantine and pope Silvester around 314; over the centuries it has changed name three times, being called Santa Maria de' Puris, Santa Maria Visitapoveri and finally Santa Maria di Dipodi. On the fifteenth of August, and on the two days before, thousands of the faithful arrive from all over Calabria and beyond: many, having made a vow, go there barefoot. Once the feast is over the place goes back to being an oasis of silence for the rest of the year. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, raised in 1612 after preparatory works begun eighty years earlier, there hangs instead a canvas of the Nativity of the Virgin which the village calls, affectionately, u quadru da Bombinella.