Giffone

The village has two names, and they say opposite things. The official one is Giffone, which is the surname of the man who founded it at the end of the sixteen hundreds: Francesco Giffone, marquis of Cinquefrondi, of a family of nobles of Polistena, Cinquefrondi and Tropea. From him the place took not only its name but its coat of arms as well, which is the family's own — chequy of silver and black in six rows, with a red band crossing the whole — and which the comune still uses today, differenced with a blue chief so that it is not identical to the lords'. The other name is the one people use in dialect: Casàli, which simply means the hamlet.

The marquis was devoted to the Madonna del Soccorso, and it was he who founded the church that bears that name; inside are the statues of the Madonna del Soccorso and of the Madonna del Carmelo, and a Saint Bartholomew carved by Domenico De Lorenzo at the end of the seventeen hundreds. Bartholomew has a sanctuary too, up at Contura, at the foot of Monte Locardi, at nine hundred and sixty-three metres: the works began in 1973, on the initiative of the parish priest of the time, Don Antonio Ritorto, and of those who lent him a hand. In the main square is the fountain of the Seven Channels; the war memorial, in bronze, is the work of Concesso Barca of Oppido and is of the nineteen twenties; and among the other things the village keeps are the duke's mill, the Calvary and the ruins of the church of San Giuseppe. All around, the plateau the village stands on and the mountains that close it in.