Pizzo Calabro: the Murat Castle, the Tartufo and the Costa degli Dei

Pizzo sits on a spur of tuff overlooking the Gulf of Sant’Eufemia, at the northern end of the Costa degli Dei. The houses step down to the Marina, the Aragonese castle closes off the town on the sea side, and below the cliff opens the small cove of La Seggiola. It is a town of nine thousand people that doubles in summer, and most of it is best seen on foot.

Three things set it apart from the other villages along this coast. The first is history: in the castle courtyard, on 13 October 1815, Joachim Murat, King of Naples and Napoleon's brother-in-law, was shot by firing squad. The second is the church of Piedigrotta, carved into the rock at the water's edge and filled with tuff statues. The third is the Tartufo, the hand-shaped ice cream born here in the 1950s and now the name Pizzo is known by.

There is also a practical advantage: Pizzo is the town on the Costa degli Dei closest to Lamezia Terme airport, under half an hour by car, and it has its own station on the Tyrrhenian railway line.

The Murat Castle and Joachim Murat's last day

The castle that closes the town on the sea side was ordered by Ferdinand I of Aragon by decree of 12 November 1480, built over an existing fourteenth-century watchtower. It is a quadrangular structure with a central block and a guard tower: one side drops sheer to the water, the other was protected by a deep moat.

The name everyone uses, however, comes from an episode three centuries later. On 8 October 1815 Joachim Murat, King of Naples and Napoleon's brother-in-law, landed at Pizzo with a handful of men to win back his lost kingdom. The expedition had sailed from Ajaccio and was bound for Salerno; a storm pushed it onto the Calabrian coast. Murat was captured by Bourbon gendarmes under Captain Trentacapilli and locked up here. A military commission chaired by General Vito Nunziante sentenced him to death, and on 13 October he was shot in the courtyard: he refused the blindfold and asked to be hit in the heart, not the face.

Today the rooms hold a museum with wax figures and reconstructions retracing those five days, from imprisonment to trial. From the ramparts the view takes in the whole gulf.

The little church of Piedigrotta carved into the tuff

A couple of kilometres north of the centre, along the Prangi shore, the church of Piedigrotta is hollowed out of the tuff rock a few steps from the water. Its origin goes back to the late seventeenth century: a Neapolitan crew was wrecked off Pizzo in a storm and the sailors, once safe, found on the beach the painting of the Madonna they had been carrying on board. In thanksgiving they carved a chapel into the cliff and placed the image inside.

What you see today, though, dates from around 1880, when Angelo Barone, who kept a small stationery shop in town, decided to devote his life to the place. He walked there every day, widened the grotto with a pickaxe, opened two side chambers and filled them with statues cut from the same tuff: Gospel scenes, saints, a Saint George killing the dragon. He died in May 1917 and his son Alfonso carried on the work for forty years. Many decades later a nephew, Giorgio Barone, a sculptor who had emigrated to Canada, came back to Pizzo and restored what time and salt air had badly damaged.

Inside it is dim and damp, with the sea audible just outside. Since August 2024 the site has been run directly by the municipality of Pizzo.

The old town and Piazza della Repubblica

The centre of Pizzo is small and vertical: narrow lanes, stairways dropping towards the Marina, arches and balconies with the gulf below. Everything converges on Piazza della Repubblica, a terrace open to the sea, balustrade on one side and café tables on the other. This is where the town gathers in the evening, and where the historic gelaterie that made the tartufo famous stand side by side.

A few steps from the square is the mother church of San Giorgio. Beneath its floor, in a common grave, the body of Joachim Murat was laid after the execution; a plaque records it. The castle museum also keeps a fragment of a lost sculpture by Antonio Canova, of which only part of the helmet survives.

The natural walk goes down from the square to the little harbour and climbs back along the flank of the castle, with the yellow tuff visible beneath the houses. In summer the bars stay open late and the square is still busy well past midnight.

The Tartufo di Pizzo: how it is made and where it comes from

The tartufo does not come out of a mould: it is shaped in the palm of the hand. Outside there is hazelnut ice cream, inside a core of melted chocolate that stays soft, and on top a dusting of cocoa and sugar. The shape comes out irregular, round and lumpy, which is exactly why it looks like a truffle dug from the ground, and where the name comes from.

It was born around 1952 out of a mishap. Giuseppe De Maria, an ice cream maker nicknamed don Pippo, had to portion loose ice cream for a wedding banquet and ran out of moulds: he shaped the servings by hand and wrapped them in sugar paper. The improvisation worked better than the original and within a few years it had become the town's speciality.

There is a good deal of confusion about its status. In December 2007 the Italian agriculture ministry published in the Official Gazette the proposal for a protected geographical indication for the Tartufo di Pizzo, with a specification setting out the production area, the ingredients and the hand shaping. The European registration, however, was never completed: today the tartufo appears on the ministry's list of traditional agri-food products. The IGP wording you see on many shop signs in town refers to that application, not to an EU mark in force.

The harbour, the beaches and the tuna of Pizzo

Below the cliff, wedged into the tuff right at the foot of the castle, opens La Seggiola: a small cove with a mooring for pleasure boats, the most photographed beach in town and also the most sheltered. It is the point where the old town touches the water.

To the north the coast stretches out. Colamaio is the longest beach in Pizzo, pale sand with a pine wood behind it that gives shade in the middle of the day; further on, Marinella continues with Mediterranean scrub reaching almost to the waterline. Beyond that, the Prangi shore changes character: calcarenite and rock, with a run of small coves separated by short piers, and the church of Piedigrotta looking out over exactly this stretch.

Pizzo is also a tuna town. Until the 1960s the most important tuna traps on the Calabrian coast worked here, and the processing has remained a living business: the delicatessens in the centre sell tuna in oil, ventresca and bottarga, and the restaurants by the harbour put them on the menu as a matter of course.

Getting to Pizzo and when to go

By car you come off the A2 motorway, exit Pizzo, then drop towards the sea on the SS522 for about six kilometres. By train the stop is Vibo Valentia-Pizzo station, on the Tyrrhenian line, a little over three kilometres from the old town.

The airport is Lamezia Terme, about 25 kilometres away: under half an hour by car. That is what makes Pizzo more convenient than anywhere else on the Costa degli Dei, since it is the first town you reach coming down from the airport. From Reggio Calabria it is a little over an hour, some 105 kilometres of motorway.

The centre is walked, not driven: leave the car in the parking areas along the road up to the town and walk down to the square. As for timing, July and August are the full months, with the square busy late into the night; June and September have warm water and a town you can breathe in. On 2 July the feast of the Madonna di Piedigrotta is celebrated, with a procession at sea. In spring and autumn the castle and the little church can be visited at leisure, and the whole coast is there to be driven.

What to see around Pizzo

From Pizzo the Costa degli Dei runs south and changes face within a few kilometres. Tropea is about thirty kilometres away, under three quarters of an hour: the town on its cliff, the sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Isola, the red onion in the markets. A little further on, Capo Vaticano closes the headland with granite coves and clear water.

Carrying on south you reach Nicotera Marina, the quietest part of the coast, with long sandy beaches and, on clear days, a view all the way to Stromboli. With three full days you can line up the whole coast without rushing, from the castle of Pizzo to the beaches of the cape.

Inland, ten kilometres or so away, Vibo Valentia keeps its Norman-Swabian castle and an archaeological museum holding finds from the Greek colony of Hipponion. And an hour of motorway to the south takes you from the Costa degli Dei to the Costa Viola, where the landscape turns steep and the Strait enters the frame.

Where to stay: our houses on the Costa Viola

Our holiday houses are not in Pizzo: they are further south, on the Costa Viola, between Palmi and Scilla. This is the coast where the Aspromonte drops straight into the sea and where, from the terraces, you can see the Strait of Messina and the Aeolian Islands. From there Pizzo is a little over an hour by motorway, and makes an easy day trip: castle, church and tartufo fit into one afternoon.

They are one-bedroom flats and apartments made for people who want the freedom of a house: your own kitchen, room for a family, your own timetable, shopping at the village market instead of a buffet at a fixed hour. People staying a week usually alternate: two or three days on the Costa Viola between Chianalea, Monte Sant'Elia and the beaches of Palmi, and a run north to Tropea and the Costa degli Dei.

If you have dates in mind, check the availability and send us a direct request: we will tell you what is free and help you choose the house that suits your group.

Frequently asked questions about Pizzo Calabro

Why is the castle of Pizzo called Castello Murat?
Because Joachim Murat, King of Naples and Napoleon's brother-in-law, was imprisoned here and shot on 13 October 1815, five days after being captured following his landing at Pizzo.

Does the Tartufo di Pizzo really hold IGP status?
No. The proposal for a protected geographical indication was published in the Official Gazette in 2007, but the European registration was never completed: the tartufo is listed among Italy's traditional agri-food products.

How far is Pizzo from Lamezia Terme airport?
About 25 kilometres, under half an hour by car on the A2 to the Pizzo exit. It is the town on the Costa degli Dei closest to the airport.

Where is the church of Piedigrotta and how do you get there?
It stands on the Prangi shore, a couple of kilometres north of the centre along the SS522. It is a few minutes by car, or a walk along the seafront.

How far is Pizzo from Tropea?
About thirty kilometres, under three quarters of an hour by car along the coast. The two places work well in a single day.

When is the feast of the Madonna di Piedigrotta?
On 2 July, with a procession at sea off the coast of Pizzo.