Stage 6: Calabria

Across the Strait of Messina, the Giro starts the long climb northwards up the peninsula, beginning in Calabria.

Calabria is an ancient land. Traces of primordial Homo Erectus presence from 700,000 years ago have been found along the coast. In the Homeric Age, a tribe of Greek wine-makers who called themselves the italoi settled in the region. By the eighth century BC, Magna Graecia had been founded and what is now Calabria flourished in Classical antiquity. The first lyric poet in Western civilization, Stesichorus, was born in the town of Metauros, now Gioia Tauro.

The province of Reggio Calabria is one of the only places in the world where the bergamot citrus is grown - famous the world over for flavoring Earl Grey tea. Calabria's other culinary claim to fame is the fantastic hot red cherry peppers grown there. They go in everything and are a strong part of regional identity - Calabrians joke about adding hot pepper to their babies' first bottles of milk.

Calabrian red peppers and two typical products which use them: 'nduja, a spreadable spicy sausage, and sardella, a "caviar" spread made from newly hatched fish, fennel seeds and red pepper.

Calabria is an ancient land where old folk traditions are still alive. Catholic religious festivals are full of remnants of Greek and Roman pagan traditions - the overwhelming presence of the Virgin Mary in the popular religious imagination owes much to Aphrodite, Demeter and Cybele - and old ladies still know the best incantations and spells to ward off the malocchio or evil eye. 

One example of the particular Calabrian mix of the Christian and pagan: In the town of Seminara, during the feast day of the Madonna dei Poveri, or Our Lady of the Poor, one of the highlights of the evening religious procession is a solo dance done by a man with a large blue banner. Riding the flagpole like a hobby horse, the dancer spins in a tight circle so the banner flies low over the ground, just barely caressing the earth. The official explanation is that the flag represents the benevolence of the Virgin blessing the land, but many folklorists have pointed out that the rather blatantly phallic positioning of the flagpole and the frenetic speed of the dance owe much more to pagan fertility ceremonies than any purely Catholic theology. 




And Calabria is a land held hostage. 

The calabrese word 'ndrangheta is believed to derive from the Greek andragathía, which means a sort of upstanding gentlemanly honor. Uomini d'onore has long been a euphemism for members of the mafia, who have no respect for the laws and ethics of the rest of human society but pride themselves on their rigid adherence to the rules and structures of their clans. 

The port city of Gioia Tauro, birthplace of the poet Stesichorus, is today the single largest point of entry for illegal shipments of cocaine in Europe. The bosses of the port ship their wares - including not only drugs, but weapons and human beings - to New York City into the hands of the remaining several of the five families, who have given up on the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and taken up with the ascendent Calabrese 'Ndrangheta. The city council of the town has twice had to be dissolved, in 1991 and 2008, because of infiltration by organized crime. And it's far from the only one: since 1991 fully 58 town and city councils have been disbanded due to infiltration. In 2012, it happened to the region's capital, Reggio Calabria, a city of 150,000 inhabitants. And over the past year, the antimafia commission of the region has been repeatedly investigated for corruption. 

Calabria is an ancient land. It has been invaded by Greeks, Saracens, Turks, Lombards and criminals. It is still standing.