Greek Calabria
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- Category: The Greeks of Calabria
- Last Updated on Friday, 23 February 2024 11:49
- Published on Friday, 24 May 2013 15:18
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The Area Grecanica (www.calabriagreca.it) is located in the province of Reggio Calabria, much of its territory is part of the Aspromonte National Park and its people, the linguistic minority of the Greeks of Calabria, have ancient origins. It is an area that conquers for its culture, history, but also for its uncontaminated nature in a continuous alternation of slopes and hills that from Aspromonte slope down to the Ionian Sea, in a frame of breathtaking views dominated by Mount Etna, snow-capped from September to May and sometimes smoking.
From Aspromonte you can see the sea, in fact you feel as if you are touching it with your finger. Sometimes you confuse it with the sky because it is mirrored in it and the colour is one. In spring, between the sky and the sea everything is yellow: broom and wild gorse cover the hills and slopes of Aspromonte, unique for its geology and biodiversity.
The Grecanica area should be discovered for the first time in spring and autumn when the full explosion of colours, scents, vegetation and flavours makes it an unforgettable place. In summer, it is best to experience the coast with its long beaches still preserved from mass tourism, with its hidden coves so quiet that they are a nesting place for sea turtles. While in winter, the snow-covered Aspromonte mountains can be snowshoed on evocative walks in the snow, and the hills and coastal areas of the Mediterranean scrub from November to January smell of the bergamots laden with green and yellow fruits, ready to be picked to extract the precious golden essence from them. It is not everyone's privilege to be able to spend a relaxing day in the sun and then rest in the coolness of Aspromonte; to alternate sea life with nature walks in the mountains; to enjoy freshly caught fish on the beach; to appreciate the wood-fired cooking of goat and lamb in the mountain huts. It is simply another way of experiencing the sea, a new way of thinking about the mountains. What makes a place that is beautiful, like so many in Italy, unique in Calabria Greca is 'the people' who know how to welcome, listen and tell their stories, because there is still a primordial sense, which has survived globalisation, the frenzy of the world and depersonalisation: the human warmth. That you feel on the street when you receive a greeting from someone you do not know, when if you ask for information, they welcome you in and offer you coffee. An ancient world where there is always time to tell a story and where the 'stranger' is welcomed as a God, for that hospitality of Homeric memory that in Greek Calabria is called filoxenia (love for the stranger).
The advantage-advantage of the Grecanica area is that it has not been affected, for better or worse, by the mass tourism development phase of the 1960s-80s. This has allowed the inland villages to remain intact.
The small-scale accommodation facilities (B&B, agritourisms) that have sprung up in recent years have been created by upgrading the existing built-up area with respect for conservative restoration and without changing the urban layout. Thus travellers and excursionists have begun to travel and visit the centres and villages of the Grecanica Area, appreciating the semi-abandoned but intact places, villages with a strong identity value and marked natural and cultural specificities.
By its vocation, the Grecanica Area is therefore devoted to niche tourism, with a prevalent character of excursion and cultural discovery; a quality tourism, sustainable in terms of measured number of presences and type of offer, interested in associating the travel dimension with the experiential and inspirational dimension, understood as the rediscovery of the times of nature, of living in archaic, uncontaminated places, far from the clamour and frenetic rhythms of the cities, and certainly the possibility of rediscovering silence, slowness and beauty as precious resources in an era of media degradation and not only. It is also a tourism interested in the traditions of country life of the past, as a means of being told a story. which as such needs almost 'tailor-made' tourist services, for tourists who come to Bova by choice, who have travelled all over the world but are looking for something they have not found elsewhere
