Squillace

Squillace has 3,400 inhabitants on the gulf that bears its name. Legend says it was founded by Ulysses, driven here by a storm on his way back from Troy, between the mouths of the Corace and the Alessi; the Greek name was Skylletion, and Virgil names its harbour in the Aeneid. Between 123 and 122 BC the Romans made it a colony, which they called in full Colonia Minervia Nervia Augusta Scolacium, and they built it not on top of the Greek town but beside it. Then Spartacus came through with sixty thousand men and put it to fire and sword: it took a century to recover.

From a county it became a principality in 1485, and it ended up with the Borgias: Goffredo, son of Pope Alexander VI and younger brother of Cesare and Lucrezia, got it as a dowry by marrying Sancia of Aragon. The Borgias, however, never came to live in Squillace — they governed from Naples or from Spain through officials — and the town faded between the earthquake of 1630 and the Saracen raids. The title, on the other hand, travelled a long way: Leopoldo de Gregorio, marquis of Squillace, was the only minister of the Naples court to follow Charles of Bourbon to Madrid in 1759, and the Spaniards called him Esquilache. A popular revolt brought him down in 1766, and in Spain that revolt still carries the name of this Calabrian village.