Monasterace

Monasterace has 3,369 inhabitants and is two villages in one: Monasterace Superiore, the old core on a hill a hundred and thirty-eight metres up, with a medieval castle, and the Marina, down by the sea. The name comes from the Greek Monastiraki, "little monastery", and is documented in a life of Saint John Therìstis of the thirteenth century; the monastery really existed, of the Eastern rite, in that Stilaro valley where Basilian monasticism flourished. In the Marina's territory lie the remains of Kaulon, a city of Magna Graecia: they were found thanks to the building of the lighthouse, which turned up the remains of a small temple and told the archaeologists where to look.

The thing that never stays still here is the coast. The village stands at Punta Stilo, today a slight hump of shoreline, but in Roman times it was something else: Pliny the Elder calls the Cocynthum promontory "longissimum Italiae promunturium", the longest promontory of Italy, and underwater archaeology has confirmed that in Greek times it reached well out to sea. Now it is the other way round: between bradyseism and winter storms the shoreline changes from year to year, and the beach widens or vanishes. And halfway up the hills, far from the water, beds of shells are still found: the sea was up there once.