Longobardi

The name of this village is a border. Here ran the line between the Lombard duchy of Benevento and the Byzantine possessions of southern Calabria, and tradition attributes its foundation to the Lombard king Liutprand. A little further down, towards Belmonte, there is still a place called Tarifi, and the name suggests what stood there: a border customs post. A different reading, drawn from the study of local words and place names, would instead trace the village back to refugees from Thourioi who arrived in 204 before Christ, when Hannibal threatened and then destroyed their city.

The municipality climbs from sea level to the one thousand five hundred and forty-one metres of Monte Cocuzzo, the highest peak of the Calabrian coastal chain. In the old centre one notices Palazzo Pellegrini, with its great staircase and the family arms frescoed above the courtyard, and Palazzo Preste, which its owners gave to the municipality for public use; the walls of the lanes are covered with murals painted by various artists. From Longobardi came Nicola Saggio, a friar of the order of the Minims who lived between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was proclaimed a saint in 2014.