Girifalco stands exactly at the centre of the isthmus of Catanzaro, the narrowest point of the whole Italian peninsula, and from the heights of Monte Covello the two seas can be seen together. The consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus had worked this out: during the Second Punic War he placed his garrisons up there precisely because from a single position he could watch both gulfs at once, and the spot is still called Setto di Marcello. On the name, by contrast, nobody agrees. That the falcon is involved is beyond doubt, and Niccolò Tommaseo remarked that the first part might be the Greek ierax, falcon: the bird of prey named twice, in two different languages.
The town was born of a flight. The inhabitants of the villages of Toco and Caria, down in the valley, moved onto a crag called Pietra dei Monaci to escape the Saracen raids, and from up there they kept an eye on the whole valley: according to an old newspaper article the year was 836. Of the abandoned villages the necropolises remain, and in a chamber tomb of the sixth or seventh century a kind of five-branched Jewish menorah came to light. The duchy of Girifalco, held by the Ravaschieri and then by the Caracciolo, lasted from 1624 to 1806.
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📅 Every year, from 14 to 24 August; Easter Sunday brings the Cumprunta on Corso Roma
Girifalco celebrates Saint Roch from 14 to 24 August, on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. On Easter Sunday, the Cumprunta or Cunfrunta is held, on Corso Roma; on the first Sunday of October, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Girifalco, but an easy day trip away.
