Not far off stood Sicri, a trading place that the lives of the Italo-Greek saints name and of which nothing survives but the name of an uninhabited district: it was probably destroyed by the Saracens of the emir Hasan. Those who escaped came down into this valley, where hackberry trees grew — melikokkos in Greek, and that is the name of the village — and where water was plentiful.
Above the village open the caves of Saint Elias the Cave-dweller, with what is left of the tenth-century Basilian monastery: the cellar, the mill, the wine press, the burial ground. The poet Lorenzo Calogero was born and died here, read by the great only after his death, and of him Ungaretti said a line that has stuck: «This Lorenzo Calogero has diminished us all».
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📅 Every year, on 23 and 24 June
On 23 and 24 June Melicuccà, a municipality of 1,001 inhabitants in the province of Reggio Calabria, celebrates its patron Saint John the Baptist with the solemn procession of the statue.
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 Melicuccà, but an easy day trip away.
