Soveria Simeri

According to a local tradition, this place was once called Trischene and took in three zones — Simeri, Soveria and Crichi — until a strong earthquake made parts of it sink, leaving the area divided into the three stumps on which today's villages stand. Two Chronicles explain the name with a Greek story: three sisters of Priam, Etilla, Astioche and Medesicaste, escaped from the ruin of Troy, are said to have landed at Uria, over towards Sellia Marina, and to have built there three tabernacles, Treis Schenè. The legend is worth what it is worth, but the ground does say something: skeletons have been found with the objects laid beside them, and coins that carry on the obverse two or three tabernacles and on the reverse the Minotaur. Trischene was first under Crotone, then put itself under the protection of Rome to escape the Bruttii and the Carthaginians, and became a colony without ever reaching the rank of municipium; in the tenth century Saracen raids destroyed it, and the population scattered over the mountains — part on Monte Panormite, part on Monte Selion, and perhaps a small group here, where Casal Suveria was born.

The present name is humbler and more exact: Soveria comes from a plant, perhaps the sorb or the Calabrian suveru, cork, because the territory was covered by a thick wood of cork oaks, and Simeri comes from the river. But for two centuries the village was called something else again. In 1541 the territory belonged to duke Ignazio Barretta, who died without heirs: his goods lay abandoned for some years and ended up in the hands of the stewards and the peasants who had been in his service. Then the fief passed to the Ravaschieri, princes of Satriano, and Francesco Ravaschieri gave it to his wife Agata Pallavicino, ordering that from that moment the village should take her name: it was called Pallavicino until 1806. In 1664, by decision of its own parliament, Pallavicino was joined to the land of Simeri with the exemption of certain villages and the payment of two hundred ducats. The last thing it lost is the sea: in 1956 a part of its territory, its outlet to the coast included, was assigned to the new comune of Sellia Marina.