In 1954 an old master shipwright built a luntre here, the low boat used to hunt swordfish in the Strait; in 1981 the town of Scilla bought it, kept it and put it on public display like a museum piece. The trade is already in the village name: Chianalea means “plain of the galleys”, and galea is both an old kind of boat and an old word for swordfish.
What to see
The houses are built almost entirely against the water, walls resting on the rocks and boats moored under the windows: hence the nickname “little Venice of the south”. The village is made of low cottages facing narrow alleys and is crossed by a single street, which reaches the harbour at one end and joins the SS18 at the other. There is barely any beach: the shore is nearly all rock, and getting into the water is awkward and not to be taken lightly.
Above, on the crag that divides Chianalea from Marina Grande, stands the Ruffo castle with the lighthouse marking the northern mouth of the Strait. This is the rock of the nymph Scylla, whom Circe out of jealousy turned into the six dog-headed monster of the Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. The harbour between the two quarters still holds working boats: feluche in Sicily, passerelle in Calabria, with the spotting tower at the masthead where the 'ntinneri climbs and the long bow gangway from which the lanzaturi throws the harpoon; the two parts, joined by steel cables, steady the hull, and twin engines hold it against the current. The earthquake of 1783 ended the town's best century; the one of 1908 killed thousands between Scilla and Messina.
Visiting
You walk it, and an hour covers everything: in from the harbour and out onto the main road, or the other way round, with detours down the flights of steps that drop to private landings. The station on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria line is above the village and the motorway exit feeds onto the SS18; leave the car up top, because down here there is one narrow street and vehicles struggle to pass each other. In summer the harbour fills with pleasure craft alongside the fishing boats. Chianalea spent a period on the list of the Borghi più belli d'Italia, and CNN placed it among the twenty most beautiful villages in the country.
Our editors' tip
Come in the last hour of daylight, when the sun drops behind Sicily and the windows light up one after another over the water: on clear days, looking north, you can pick out Stromboli far out at sea. Then stop for swordfish at one of the places with tables on the rocks, and ask where it came from: here they can answer, and it is the most direct way to understand what kept this place going before the tourists arrived.
