Bova Marina has 4,142 inhabitants on the Ionian coast, in that Bovesia where the Greek of Calabria is still spoken: in Grecanico the village is called Jalò tu Vùa. It is not ancient: around 1870 the bishop of Reggio-Bova, monsignor Dalmazio D'Andrea, bought from the state a strip of land along the Siderone torrent, divided it and gave it away to the peasants who agreed to come down from the mountain. An autonomous comune since 1908, it grew again after the war, when a flood pushed down the inhabitants of Roghudi Vecchio and the other high villages.
In 1986, while the state road in the San Pasquale valley was being widened, the remains of a building that looked like a Roman villa came to light by chance. Then the mosaic appeared, thirty square metres with the menorah at the centre, the citron and the palm branch to the right, the shofar to the left: it was a fourth-century synagogue, the oldest in the West after the one at Ostia. The chief rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff came in person to confirm it. Today the site is the archaeological park of Archeoderi.
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📅 Every year, during the first week of August
Bova Marina celebrates Our Lady of the Sea, or Stella Maris, during the first week of August: she has been patron since a group of fishermen found an ancient sacred painting on the seabed.
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 Bova Marina, but an easy day trip away.
