In Scalea (a photo gallery)

April 6, 2023

Scalea is one of our rewards for our abrupt change of plans. It wasn’t part of our original itinerary because it’s too far north on the Tyrrhenian coast to stitch in, but we’re finding it’s an outstanding destination. I’m not sure how I picked it out from any of the other coastal towns we could have broken the train ride at, other than it’s one we’ve never stayed at and it looked interesting enough as a base for a ride or two and a hike.

First, a little background on Scalea, stolen from the usual source:

Scalea (Calabrian: Scalìa, lit. "stair" or "ladder") takes its name from its terraced layout on a hillside at the bottom of the Capo Scalea promontory. The old city sits within a preserved set of ancient walls on the heights, while the beach at its base was developed into a modern shopping and leisure center known as the Scalea Marina.

The interior of Scalea is an intricate maze of stairs, alleys, wide streets and plazas, support beams, and arches. One of the defining characteristics of the historic center is "suppuorti": wooden floors built above the alleyways, born out of the need for defensibility and for growth in dense limited space.

Scalea is notable as one of the very first human settlements in southern Italy. Excavations of the caves beneath Torre Talaohave unearthed Neanderthal bones and stone tools from the Paleolithicand the surrounding Lao Valley also contains evidence of small Protohistoric Bronze and Iron Age (approximately 10,000-7,000 B.C.E.) communities throughout.

The present city of Scalea arose sometime during the Lombard-Byzantine Conflict. Towards the end of the 7th century, Scalea was occupied by the Lombards and it remained their colony up until Charlemagne’s conquest of Italy in the 800s. The Lombards built the city's fortress, its two gates, and many surrounding homes that linked together to function as a wall. The city's main military gate sat at the top guarded by Gastaldo Fortress, which was later converted by the Normans into a castle, additional housing, and Piazza Cimalonga. It is during this time that the city came to be known as Scalea, perhaps due to the neighborhood surrounding the castle gradually developing outwards and vertically like rungs on a ladder.

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The weather changed drastically overnight. It’s raining this morning and forecast to rain off and on all day; and it’s cold, with a high of 53F/12C. Not a biking day obviously, and maybe not even one for looking around town. We don’t mind, really. We settle in to catch up on the blogs and resume bookings for our remodeled tour.

Around ten, I look out the window and see a few patches of blue and clearing out toward the sea. In spite of the fact that Weather.com asserts that it’s currently raining, it looks like we have some sort of window. We hurriedly wrap up our activities and prepare for a walk, planning to stay out for as long as the weather permits. We have a logistics problem though: we only have a single key. We know we’ll mostly walk on our own, so our plan is that Rachael will take the key, we’ll each take phones, and we’ll keep in touch so I can get back in later. I’ve got cash, so if she’s not close to home when the time comes to get out of the rain I’ll find a bar or cafe to shelter in while I wait for her to return.

I’m out the door first, fortunately spotting the phone on the table at the last minute and avoiding screwing myself. Ten minutes later I’m nearing the sea, passing a row of panel vans selling fruit and veggies out the back. I stop for a shot or two, and then stuff my hands back in my pockets because it’s cold and resume walking toward the beach.

I get a few steps, when fortunately I notice that I’ve got a phone in each hand. Crap.

So this is a problem. Rachael’s got the keys, I’ve got both phones, she’s in a fourth floor apartment in a locked apartment building. I can’t call her, and I can’t get in. I stew on this for a minute before it occurs to me that I can send her an email that she’ll hopefully see on her iPad - which she does soon enough of course, because she knows we’ve got a problem too. She’s back at the apartment trying to load WhatsApp onto the iPad so she can call me with it when she sees my message.

I walk back, we meet at the door, and start walking toward the beach again. Just another good story and a new lesson to keep in mind, although we’ve wasted about twenty minutes of our possibly short break in the weather. Dumb.

We walk down to the beach together and then to the base of the small tower perched on a rock before going our own ways. We won’t see each other again until we’re back at the apartment, though we’ll cover much of the same territory in the meantime. And we’ll both find one thing after another worth breaking out the camera for, so this post is a huge photo dump. Photos from the two of us are intermixed except where we went to different destinations.

She’s gone. That’s Torre Talao on the left, and old Scalea rising ahead.

Torre Talao. Closed this morning, though we were both accosted by a persistent gent trying to talk us into a guided tour that he supposedly could provide us access for.

Not a new species, but a much better look at a European goldfinch then we saw earlier.

The attractive promenade just back from the shore. We’re in Scalea Marina, the modern town that lies beneath the historical city. It’s a nice, comfortable place, and still very quiet because the tourism season hasn’t really begun yet.

A look up at the historical city. We’ll both see much more of it later, and so will you.

On the beach, Tropea Marina. It’s a resort, but not much is open yet. Work crews are getting ready though, smoothing the beach in preparation for the rafts of beach chairs and palapas soon to come.

Our weather window is still holding, but for how long? The long Palinuro Peninsula is dimly visible out there in the gloom.

The northern end of the beach comes to an end at a small rocky headland.

I turn back when I come to the headland, even though there’s something of a walking trail that continues on. I want to see the town itself before the rain comes, and I don’t want to get too far from the room either. First, I meander up the hill to the lighthouse, because it sounds interesting and I expect to get some good views. In retrospect this wasn’t the best use of my time, and after looking at Rachael’s photos from the castle I’ll wish I’d gone up there instead.

I do get some nice views back toward the sea though, and best of all is the different perspective on the old city you can get from here.

Interesting colors and textures in both the sea and sky.

The Scalea lighthouse supposedly (it’s labeled Faro Scalea on the map), but I’m not sure what this thing really is.

The old city has such a medieval look, crowned by the remains of the ruined Norman castle. In between here and there is a deep ravine, so I’ll have to mender back down to sea level again before climbing up there.

Looking up at the old city from the ravine. This is one edge of the collapsed viaduct of what I assume is a former rail line that tunneled beneath the city.

Any ideas? Some kind of thrush? A Eurasian blackbird?

Old Tropea is an astonishing place to wander through, a beehive riddled with steep, narrow staircases and tunnels. On the northern side most of these are sealed off - it looks like part of the former city must have collapsed into the ravine at some point, maybe from an earthquake; and on the south side there’s something of a main road to the top that’s wide enough that a few cars that can make it to the top. For the most part though these streets and alleys are accessible only by foot, and in some spots I’d say only by fairly slender people.

I won’t really say anything about these photos, other than to point out that it’s amazing to think of people actually living in here, as some do even now. I don’t know how they service their units, since for the most part you can’t get anywhere near them except on foot and up or down stairs. An incredible place.

And then there’s the ruined Norman castle at the top, which I didn’t explore at all other than to stare up at it from below. Fortunately Rachael did though, and brought back a nice collection of shots of the castle and the town and surroundings from above.