Joppolo

The village has three names. The official one is Joppolo, the Byzantine Greek one was Iambolos, and the one used when speaking Calabrian resembles it not at all: Pacenzia. The rest of its past, in the sources, is a nearly blank page — the origin of the name is not explained, the history is not written, and even the coat of arms came late, granted by decree only in 1983. What can be said for certain is how it is placed: the centre is at one hundred and seventy-seven metres, laid along the last southern spurs of Monte Poro, and the municipal territory rises from sea level to the summit of that mountain, seven hundred and ten metres, which lies within its boundaries. From the beach to the highest point, all inside the same comune.

It is worth telling the mountain, then. What sets the Poro apart from the other Calabrian massifs is its mildness: the climate, the varied vegetation and above all a dense population spread among many small villages, because a summit of seven hundred and ten metres lets itself be lived on right to the top. From that height the eye takes in the Tyrrhenian coast from Cetraro to Scilla and the plains of Lamezia Terme and Gioia Tauro, and this is why the mountain became an important centre for the transmission of radio and television signals. It is also one of the two places in Calabria, together with the Locride, where the Calabrian lira was played, a bowed instrument almost fallen out of use in the nineteen-fifties and then spreading again through the rest of the region. On the plateau they make the pecorino of Monte Poro, the ricotta and, a little further off, the nduja of Spilinga.