Piane Crati

Piane Crati is the smallest of Calabria's 404 comuni: two and a half square kilometres in all, on a hill at 609 metres southeast of Cosenza, in the Presila. The name puts together two things that lie lower down: the plains and the Crati, the river the Greeks called Krathys; in dialect the village is simply Chiànë, the plains. In that little space there are still three hamlets, Chiarrione, San Marco and Taverna Sottana, and more than five hundred inhabitants to the square kilometre.

The arms, granted in 1977, carry neither towers nor beasts: they carry Saint Barbara, haloed in gold and dressed in a silver mantle, holding a bunch of grapes and an olive branch, which is what the land around gives. Little written trace of the village's history remains, and the date that is remembered is a disaster: on 27 March 1638 the earthquake that struck the Crati valley severely damaged the place.