Nocara

Within this comune's territory lies the northernmost point of Calabria: further north you cannot go. The village is perched on a limestone crag at almost nine hundred metres, on the right bank of the Sinni valley. The name comes from the Greek of the Byzantines and means nut tree, but it is a trap: the Greek nut, for them, was the almond. Whoever hears it thinks of one plant and finds another.

Here they say they are Lagaria, the city that Epeus, the man who built the Trojan horse, is supposed to have founded on his way back from the war, naming it after his mother. Others derive the name from the lagaroi, the exhausted, the veterans worn out by the journey; and the castle on top of the hill is still called Lagarino. But Lagaria has been quarrelled over for centuries, and four other towns claim it. Nor is that all: the Piano della Noce, not far off, has been identified by a scholar of Homeric geography as the place where Polyphemus shut Ulysses in.