The name is a rose garden — rosetum — because in Greek and Roman times roses were grown here, and the petals went to fill the pillows of the women of Sybaris: Roseto was one of the satellite towns of Sybaris. The «Capo Spulico» was added only in 1970, from the headland near by. The castle stands sheer above the sea: a first stronghold was put up by Robert Guiscard, but the great one, the Castrum Petrae Roseti, is of 1260. It is old enough and well known enough to appear on the old nautical charts — and it is there too in the map of Italy frescoed in the Hall of Maps, in the Vatican.
Below the castle, on the beach, there is a rock everyone calls the mushroom, and it is the thing that ends up on the postcards. Until a generation ago the village lived on figs, pears, lemons, broad beans, peas, olives and free-ranging sheep; then, from the nineteen eighties, it became the main seaside resort of the Ionian coast of Cosenza. The census of 2001 shows what that meant: beside the village, with seven hundred and forty-seven inhabitants, and the marina, with eight hundred and fifteen, it counted holiday villages of ten, five, three and two residents, one that had none at all, and a single person recorded as living in the countryside. The museum of shells was founded by two poets, and one of them, Dante Maffia, was born here.
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📅 Every year, on 6 December in Roseto paese
Roseto Capo Spulico has different patrons for its two centres: Saint Nicholas of Myra, celebrated on 6 December in Roseto paese, and Saint Anne, celebrated on 26 July in Roseto Marina.
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 Roseto Capo Spulico, but an easy day trip away.
