Ricadi

The promontory of Capo Vaticano, which belongs to Ricadi, divides the gulf of Sant'Eufemia from that of Gioia Tauro: on one side the beaches of very white sand at Grotticelle, Riaci and Tono, on the other the sea floor of Formicoli with its spread of granite boulders. The land is terraced in wide steps, and for that very reason the fossil-bearing strata of the Miocene are easy to reach: out come shells of tropical seas, sharks' teeth, corals and even parts of the skeletons of marine and land mammals. In a few valleys a rare giant fern survives, the bulb-bearing fern. Each wind here has its own reputation: the ponente, the sirocco and the libeccio are dangerous for anyone going out to sea, while the mistral, which prevails, almost never causes trouble.

Ricadi and the villages around it were hamlets dependent on Tropea until 1799, when they obtained their independence thanks to the intervention of the French general Championnet; a decree of 1811 made the place a comune of the district of Monteleone, today Vibo Valentia. Since 2015 the town has had a scattered museum, spread between the centre and the hamlets: the museum of the sea in the former lookout at Capo Vaticano, with panels on the ancient plants for catching and processing tuna found along this coast; the museum of the towers, inside the archaeological park of the Torre Marrana, where copies are shown of the prints of the Codice Romano Carratelli, which in the sixteenth century drew the coastal towers of Calabria; and the museum of the red onion of Tropea, in the former railway station of Ricadi Scalo, that is, in the building where for a century the onions were stored and sent off by rail. In the cemetery of San Nicolò lies Giuseppe Berto, the writer from the Veneto who chose to live here, and every June the prize that bears his name goes to a young novelist.