Serrastretta

Serrastretta has 3,249 inhabitants in a gorge between two ridges, at the foot of the Sila. The village was born in 1383, when five families from Scigliano, the Bruni, the Mancuso, the Fazio, the Talarico and the Scalise, left that town because of internal feuds and took shelter in this narrow place among the mountains. The name, though, was not theirs: it was some people from Taverna, on their way to Nicastro, who noticed a small settlement "narrow between two serre", and the description stuck. The arms show three pines on three green hills, standing for the woods of chestnut, oak and beech that still cover the territory.

Serrastretta is known for two very different things. The first is chairs: a wooden frame and a seat woven with vuda, a rush that grows in the marshy ground; the village is among the main producers in Calabria and still makes them the way they were always made. The second is a surprise: it was one of the first towns in southern Italy to have electric light, before Catanzaro itself. In the lower part of the village stand the remains of the hydroelectric plant run by the Società Idro Elettrica Serrastrettese, which dates from 1908.