Mammola

Mammola stands on the ruins of Malèa, a Greek-Locrian colony recalled by Thucydides. At its foot runs the Chiaro, and a little further off the Torbido, once called the Sagra: on the bed of that river, in the sixth century BC, the Locrians allied with the men of Reggio defeated the Crotoniates in the battle of the Sagra. The village as we see it was born much later, between 950 and 986, when the people who had abandoned the Ionian coast to escape Saracen raids settled up here; the monasteries became the centre of cultural life, with a scriptorium where codices and treatises were copied by hand.

The street names are a linguistic archive: before official toponymy the streets and quarters were called Certò, Begna, Hfamurra, Buveri, Fana, Mammuleju, Ponzo, Cuccianni, Cundutteiu, Gellario, Gruttu — words of Hebrew, Arabic and Greek origin, many still in use. The Del Pozzo, nobles of Sicilian origin, gave the comune eight mayors between 1718 and 1915, and one of them, Nicodemo Maria, held office for more than twenty years. In an old Basilian monastery, finally, the artist Nik Spatari made the Parco museo Santa Barbara, devoted to modern and contemporary art.