Brancaleone

Brancaleone has 3,624 inhabitants on the Ionian coast of the Reggio province, and they call it the town of the turtles: on these beaches and on those of the neighbouring comuni the loggerhead turtle comes to lay its eggs, and this stretch of coast is the most important nesting site in the whole of Italy. An association in the village watches over the nests and treats the specimens that end up in the nets by mistake.

The village was once called Sperlonga, then Mottaleonis — motta is the rise in the ground, the lion perhaps a metaphor — and today's name is thought to be a nickname. The old settlement, built before the year one thousand, was destroyed by the earthquake of 1783 and is today an archaeological park called Brancaleone Vetus. Here Cesare Pavese arrived by train in 1935: accused of anti-fascism because a letter from Altiero Spinelli, who was in prison in Rome, had turned up among his papers, he was sentenced to three years of internal exile at Brancaleone Calabro.