The Grecanic village

Details: Category: dintornis; Last Updated on Friday, 23 February 2024 13:48; Published on Thursday, 23 May 2013 15:27; Hits: 1529

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The Grecanici villages mentioned are located in the mountains, are cultural and natural attractions, still have people living there, and can be reached from Bova. The Grecanici municipalities on the coast (Bova Marina, Brancaleone Marina, Palizzi Marina, Condofuri Marina, San Lorenzo Marina, Melito di Porto Salvo...) are not mentioned here because they are new settlements, where the main tourist attraction is the beaches and the sea.

Village of Gallicianò (Municipality of Condofuri)
Gallicianò is defined as the Acropolis of Magna Graecia: it is a small centre located in the heart of Aspromonte, perched on the promontories of the Grecanica area that overlooks the right slope of the Fiumara Amendolea and, together with Bova, preserves the historical memory of the Greeks of Calabria: the Grecanica language, the art of broom weaving, of wood carving according to Byzantine forms. It is a hamlet of the municipality of Condofuri, a place frozen in time: forty inhabitants in a cluster of houses on the rocks overlooking the Fiumara Amendolea. Among the narrow alleys one can still hear people speak in Grecanico and the toponymy is indeed bilingual, as in Bova. Although the Greek language is mainly used in an increasingly domestic environment, thanks to its structural isolation Gallicianò has kept intact its cultural, craft, musical and religious traditions and has developed in its inhabitants a strong spirit of togetherness and hospitality, characteristics peculiar to the Greeks of Calabria. In Gallicianò there is the Orthodox Church of Panaghìa tis Elladas (Our Lady of the Greeks) where services are celebrated in the Greek Orthodox rite. Despite being sparsely populated, Gallicianò is a village in ferment, recognised as the 'capital' of music, which together with singing and dancing constitutes an authentic art for the inhabitants of Gallicianò, cultivated and handed down from father to son since ancient times. Many are the cultural tourists who visit it, staying overnight and tasting the Greek Calabrian food and wine in the village's typical inns. In the village is the Ethnographic Museum dedicated to Angela Bogasari Merianoù, the Greek philosopher who came to Gallicianò in the 1970s to discover this small community with which she shared her origins. In Gallicianò, those who live there are proud of their land of Magna Graecia origins and ready to tell their story as they accompany the visitor through the streets of the village and let him quench his thirst at the Fountain of Love (Cannalo Tis Agapi) and rest in the small open-air amphitheatre, dedicated to Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, who visited the village, overlooking the magnificent landscape of the Bovesìa where the Amendolea Castle rises in the distance.