The first settlement here was a hermitage: Basilian monks at Fonte Laurato, with a church dedicated to Santa Domenica. When that fell down, the Mamistra couple built the abbey of Fonte Laurato on the same spot, and in 1201 it was given to the Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore; the French sacked and abandoned it. From the eleventh century the hills filled with watchtowers — Torre del Regio, Torre Lunga, Torre Vardano, Torre de' Rossi — and the Castello della Valle was begun. When the Spanish arrived, in the early sixteenth century, the fief went to captain Hernando de Alarcón, who put the castle back in order and strengthened the walls, and then to Pietro Gonzales de Mendoza: the same Alarcón y Mendoza who held Rende and, in Abruzzo, the Valle Siciliana. In 1807 Napoleonic troops besieged the village and the castle was half destroyed; the undergrounds, the portal and a piece of the north side survived.
It was a painter who took it in hand again. In 1975 the Sicilian Salvatore Fiume offered, free of charge, to bring the old centre back to life: until 1996 he painted the inner and outer walls of the half-ruined castle, in 1977 the dome of the little church of San Rocco, and in the nineties he set a bronze sculpture in each of the two squares that look at the sea, The Surf Girl and The Medallion of Fortune. In the kitchen, meanwhile, two things survive that explain the place: the filiciata, a soft curd cheese laid on fern fronds, which used to be made for 15 August, and the frittata di patate, which despite its name contains no eggs.
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.
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