The name of Amantea is a deposit of conquests. First came the Greek Clampetia; then the Byzantines fortified the hill and called it Nepetia, new town; in 839 the Arabs arrived, made it the capital of an emirate and renamed it al-Mantiah, the stronghold. When the Byzantines took it back, half a century later, the Arabic name had stuck, and it is still there.
Amantea had no feudal masters: it was a crown town, with institutions of its own, apart from a short and troubled spell in the middle of the seventeenth century. It cared about that: in 1269 it was one of the last strongholds to hold out against the Angevins in the name of Conradin of Hohenstaufen, and between 1806 and 1807 it stood up to the French for a long time, barricaded in its castle. Today that rocca, Byzantine in origin and Norman in its tower, stands abandoned above the town.
Cipolla Rossa di Tropea Calabria
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Next up: Saint Anthony of Padua, patron of the land of the living chess game, Sunday 13 June
Nearest airport: Lamezia Terme, 29 km away
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📅 Every year, on 13 June; between late October and early November the Fair, sometimes called «of the dead»
Amantea celebrates Saint Anthony of Padua on 13 June. Between late October and early November, the town holds its annual Fair, sometimes inaccurately called the «Fair of the Dead», while town events also include Carnival and a game of living chess.
Sweet enough to go into ice cream, grown along a strip of Tyrrhenian coast: Cipolla Rossa di Tropea Calabria has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2008.
Read more →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 Amantea, but an easy day trip away.
