The village lies on the Tyrrhenian side of the Aspromonte, and its territory runs from barely five hundred metres in the fields to seventeen hundred on the mountain; from monte Scirocco you can see the strait of Messina, the Aeolian islands and Etna. It was founded in the Byzantine age, in the seventh century, probably by the refugees who came up from the coasts of Calabria and Sicily into the Aspromonte to escape the pirates; according to an older reading the name comes from the Greek stephanos, which matches the Latin corona, that is the belt of defence of the Roman forces upstream. What made it grow was then the Basilian monastery of San Giovanni in Castaneto, which from 1100 onwards was the centre from which Italo-Greek spirituality spread over the whole western Aspromonte; the parish, founded in 1310, is one of the oldest in the diocese of Reggio. The sea, though, remained a threat: in 1543 the Ottoman admiral Khayr al-Din, Barbarossa, came right up here, and a few years later the corsair Dragut. In 1648 the men of Santo Stefano took part in the anti-Spanish rebellion that broke out at Reggio on the wave of Masaniello's.
In the village square, on the twenty-ninth of August 1847, Domenico Romeo raised the tricolour: it was the first time in the south of Italy, and today a monument to the flag stands there. A few days later, on the second of September, the Romeo led the revolt on Reggio Calabria, took the city and set up a provisional government there; but the rising failed elsewhere, the royal troops concentrated on the strait and the insurrection was drowned in blood. Domenico Romeo was killed, the others captured and condemned to death; released later, they went on working for unity and became members of parliament. On the seventh of November 1860, when Victor Emmanuel II entered Naples with Garibaldi, behind him was old Giannandrea Romeo, and his daughter Elisabetta was waving the tricolour on the royal palace. From this same village, in 1876, came Giuseppe Musolino, the last brigand, whose story filled the newspapers of half of Europe. At the entrance to the village, finally, there is a nursery school designed by Marcello Piacentini, with a bronze winged Victory in the tympanum.
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📅 Every year, on 26 December (Saint Stephen); in Mannoli on 15 August (Assumption)
On 26 December Santo Stefano in Aspromonte celebrates its patron Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, whose name became part of the town's own name, within the Aspromonte National Park.
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 Santo Stefano in Aspromonte, but an easy day trip away.
