Isca sullo Ionio

Isca is of Greek origin and, according to the legend, its first name was Sanagasi. The old town stood near the sea, roughly where Isca Marina is today; then, probably in the ninth century, the inhabitants went up, to where Isca stands now, wedged between two mountains. The reason was practical: from up there the whole sea is visible, and anyone coming from the sea was seen in time to prepare. They stayed up there for centuries. Isca was one of the casali dependent on the far more influential Badolato, and the barons of Badolato were its feudatories too: the Ruffo of Catanzaro, the di Francia and, from 1454, the Toraldo, who administered it until 1596; then came the Ravaschieri, the Pinelli and finally the Pignatelli di Belmonte, who ceded it in retro feudo to the Gallelli, who held power until the end of feudalism, in 1806.

In the twentieth century the village came back down. Today the territory begins at sea level, with Isca Marina, and climbs to a little over eleven hundred metres, between the river Salùbro to the north and the Gallipari to the south, with the Serre behind. And in the expansion zone of Isca Marina there is a locality called Sanagasi — the name of the place they had left — where the remains of a villa and other finds of the Roman age have come to light: they went back exactly where they had been. In between there is what a small village keeps: the ruins of the church of San Giovanni, of 1613; an eighteenth-century defence tower; Palazzo Romiti Cosentino and Palazzo Leuzzi; the old mills along the torrent Valle Oscura and a hand-worked olive press; and a museum of the instruments of Calabrian popular music. The Gallipari waterfalls are near the old little hydroelectric station of the Romito, and the small falls of Isca higher up, in the Valle Oscura. The earthquake of 1947 killed two people.