Featured on page 9 of the Italian passport and chosen to represent Calabria at the 2015 Expo, the Cattolica di Stilo is one of Southern Italy's most significant Byzantine structures. Built between the 9th and 10th centuries on the slopes of Mount Consolino prior to the Norman conquest, this central-plan national monument has been a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage status since 2006, alongside seven other Calabrian sites. The term Cattolica comes from the Greek katholikì, designating privileged churches equipped with a baptistery, a title retained over the centuries, much like the first church of Reggio Calabria. Until the 11th century, it served as the mother church for five parishes, governed by a perpetual vicar who succeeded the Byzantine protopapa.
What to see
The cubic building shares its middle-Byzantine inscribed-cross layout with San Marco in Rossano Calabro, San Giorgio di Pietra Cappa, and the Ottimati of Reggio Calabria. The western side rests directly on bare rock, while the eastern facade, terminating in three apses, stands on three stone and brick bases. The 70-centimetre-thick walls feature stone and brick buttresses and a distinct weave of large bricks joined by mortar. Archaeologist Francesco Cuteri discovered a stamp on one brick tracing its origin to a 3rd-century AD Roman workshop near Scolacium (salvaged from a villa in the Maddaloni district), refuting Paolo Orsi's belief that they were Imperial Roman wallings. Largely devoid of exterior decoration save for two sawtooth brick cornices, the church is crowned by five opus reticulatum domes covered in square, lozenge-laid terracotta tiles. Scholars Bérteaux and Ferrante argue these domes are original models, independent of similar five-domed churches in Cyprus like Peristerona and Hieroskipos. Inside, four columns divide the space into nine sections, with the central dome being taller and wider. These columns rest on salvaged ancient bases, including an inverted Ionic base atop an upside-down Corinthian capital, and an inverted Ionic capital. Surviving frescoes, unearthed by Giorgio Leone between 1968 and 1980, include Christ Pantocrator, the Annunciation, Saint John the Baptist, and a 1552 Dormitio Virginis.
Visiting
Following centuries of silence, the church's history was reawakened by Canon Michelangelo Macrì in the 19th century and Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz's 1840 travels. Inside, visitors experience an architectural layout where lighting deliberately manipulates space and human scale. The eastern side houses three apses: the central bema for the altar, the southern diakonikon for sacred vestments, and the northern prothesis for the preparation of bread and wine. The latter features a fragment of an ancient column used as a Eucharistic table and a 1577 local bronze bell bearing a relief of the Madonna and Child, which, alongside a small granite holy water font, marks the transition to the Latin rite. On the first column to the right, you can see a cross carved with Greek uncial letters (Psalm 118:27, Deus Dominus nobis apparuit) and two Islamic shahadas (There is no God but the one God and Praise be to God). This suggests the Arabs spared the church, possibly using it as a Muslim oratory. Successive restorations, from Orsi's removal of a cusped front with a trilobed window (1912-1927) and Gilberto Martelli's roof repairs (1947-1951), to the 2004-2006 Iconos Consortium works and 2011 Ministry rainwater safeguards, have yielded major discoveries. These include late-medieval bones, a marble tomb holding the vicar's remains and a valuable ring, and a 15th-century inscription found via photogrammetry by Elia Fiorenza in 2017.
Our editors' tip
Pay close attention to the shaft of the first column on the right upon entering: the Arabic inscriptions carved into the stone provide concrete proof of the profound cultural layering and complex religious history that swept through this region over the centuries.