Nardodipace

Nardodipace is the highest inhabited centre of Calabria's 404 comuni: 1080 metres, on the southeastern edge of the Serre, on the Ionian side, where the Allaro torrent runs down. It was born in the 18th century as a casale of Fabrizia and became a comune only in 1901. Then the village was built three times. The flood of 1951 swept it away, and it was made again in three years six kilometres further up, at Ciano: the old settlement was abandoned and has been called Nardodipace Vecchio ever since. In 1973 a second flood: the building sites opened only in 1981 and closed in 1990, of the dwellings planned, 425, only 256 were built, and the inspections took another nine years. The keys were handed over on 30 November 1999.

In 2002 a large fire cleared the wood and brought into view what are now called the megaliths of Nardodipace: two geosites with huge blocks of quartz and granite set against each other. Some date them between the fifth and the second millennium before Christ and read them as human work, others explain them as a natural formation due to the seismicity of the place; the archaeophysics department of the University of Turin has studied them, but without official excavation the question stays open. Since 2004 the territory has been in the regional natural park of the Serre. The church of the Nativity, Baroque with Byzantine elements, was built by Tommaso Cascella during the rebuilding of the village.