Rocca Imperiale has 3,292 inhabitants on a hill a few kilometres from the Ionian, and it is the northernmost inhabited centre of Calabria. The name says who made it: Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, who built the castle here from which the place took its imperial rock. The emperor's building fury worried even his own officials: the justiciar Tomaso de Gaeta wrote to him that it was not necessary for His Majesty to build fortresses so high up, to fortify the tops of steep hills and to bar the mountain slopes with walls and towers, because even without fortifications the safety of the king would be assured by beneficent works and by mildness.
The way that castle was kept up is more interesting still. In the Statutum de reparatione castrorum Frederick laid down that twenty-seven different places had to see to its repair, and were bound to send men and means: Senise, Chiaromonte, Tursi, Latronico, Castelsaraceno and others, some more than twenty kilometres away in a straight line, across rivers and differences in height, while much nearer villages were left off the list. One likely explanation is political: a garrison that depends on its own neighbours risks growing too fond of them. Today the town is best known for its lemons, which have carried the IGP mark since 2011.
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📅 Every year, on 1 and 2 July, since 1644 in memory of a spared Turkish raid
Rocca Imperiale celebrates the Madonna della Nova on 1 and 2 July. The solemnity became patronal right after a large Turkish fleet, which appeared on 29 June 1644, withdrew without striking the town.
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 Rocca Imperiale, but an easy day trip away.
