Kids in Palmi: gardens, a Green Flag beach and the Varia festival

Palmi tells its story to children on three levels. The old town, 228 metres above the sea, has its best-loved garden in Villa Mazzini, where a play area built from the ground up in 2023 tells the city’s legends through drawings made by local schoolchildren. Heading down towards Taureana, a hamlet at 76 metres, a headland holds the remains of the Tauriani settlement and the Roman town that followed, open to visitors at weekends. Further down still, the Lido di Palmi stretches for about two kilometres of pale sand and pebbles, praised by paediatricians with the Green Flag award for its space, safety and family-friendly services.

Unlike many Calabrian festivals, here children are not just spectators: on the Varia, the sixteen-metre structure inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2013, the top is held by the Animella, a girl chosen by popular vote in the very same public garden, while thirty girls aged seven to eleven turn as angels along the structure. The pages that follow explain how to move between the town’s three levels, what to see with opening hours that need checking season by season, and where to take the youngest children when the midday sun makes the beach less inviting.

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Villa Mazzini and the Children’s Village

Palmi’s public garden, laid out in the nineteenth century and looking out over the Tyrrhenian Sea, has stone paths, a bandstand and shaded benches, but the spot children look for first is the Children’s Village: a supervised play area opened in July 2023 through grassroots fundraising, with no public funding. The swings and structures are decorated with panels telling Palmi’s legends, from Donna Canfora to the Varia, drawn by pupils from the town’s primary schools and chosen through a competition.

In 2025 the area grew with the addition of the Mata and Grifone giants and a little horse, the same figures found in the town’s ethnographic museum. From the garden’s viewpoint the eye reaches the Tyrrhenian, the Strait of Messina, the Aeolian Islands and the coast towards Bagnara and Scilla: a handy stop for a mid-morning break before heading down to Taureana or the sea.

Taureana: the archaeological park at weekends

Heading down from the centre towards the sea you reach Taureana, a hamlet 76 metres up on a rocky headland above the water. Here an archaeological park holds the remains of the Tauriani settlement and the Roman town that followed: a paved road, a performance building with its seating area, a sixteenth-century watchtower and the crypt of San Fantino, an early Christian structure from the fourth century, among the oldest traces of Christian worship in Calabria.

Guided visits take place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons by reservation, with a reduced ticket for children: hours that complement the museums in the centre, which are instead closed at weekends. Opening times change between summer and winter and should always be confirmed before planning the day, especially for visitors coming from out of town.

Palmi’s beach: sand, pebbles and a Green Flag

Palmi’s bathing coastline is known as the Lido, made up of the Tonnara, Pietrenere, Scinà and Ciambra areas, about two kilometres of shoreline that changes look after every storm, from pale sand to pebbles. It is one of the beaches on the Green Flag list, the award given since 2008 to beaches judged child-friendly by Italian and foreign paediatricians on concrete criteria: space between umbrellas to play, water that doesn’t deepen suddenly, lifeguards always present, and services nearby for families.

Closing the Tonnara beach to the south is the Scoglio dell’Ulivo, known locally as A Luvareddhra: a rock out in the sea with a centuries-old olive tree bent by salt and wind, reachable only by swimming, and now the symbol of the town, the kind of story that works well with children looking out at the horizon. Not every cove along the coast is easy with young children: Trachini beach, further north, can only be reached from the sea and has no way in on foot.

Getting between the centre, Taureana and the sea with kids

Palmi is not a single town but three places at different heights, linked by a network of public urban lines run by the PPM municipal company, Piana Palmi Multiservizi, which connect the centre to Taureana and the Scinà seafront. It’s the easiest option for anyone travelling with children and pushchairs who doesn’t want to walk the difference in height between the three areas; timetables and tickets can also be checked through the service’s app.

The railway station is in the Buffari district, far from the town centre and without a ticket office or toilets: arriving by train, it’s worth planning straight away for a stretch on the urban bus or a lift, rather than a walk with luggage and small children. By car, the reference exit on the A2 Mediterranean motorway is the Palmi exit, convenient for anyone coming from the Piana or the Strait.

Monte Sant’Elia: the pine wood when the beach gets too hot

Above the town, at 582 metres, Monte Sant’Elia is Palmi’s balcony: panoramic terraces, three large white crosses and a view that on clear days reaches Capo Vaticano, the Strait of Messina, the Aeolian Islands, Stromboli and Etna. Palmi is not part of the Aspromonte National Park, which covers another thirty-seven municipalities in the province: here the relationship between sea and mountain plays out entirely within the town’s own boundaries, a few minutes’ drive from the centre.

In the pine wood a children’s play area and picnic spots with tables and benches have been built, designed precisely as an alternative for the hottest hours of the day, when the sun makes the beach less comfortable for the youngest. It’s also a launch point for paragliding and hang-gliding, a sight often watched from below, from the beach or the seafront.

Children at the heart of the Varia festival

The Varia di Palmi is not held every year, but when the Comitato Varia organises it, a sixteen-metre shoulder-borne structure, carried by around two hundred people, takes to the streets: editions similar to those held in 2014, 2016, 2019, 2023 and 2024. Since 2013 it has been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, alongside the Macchina di Santa Rosa in Viterbo, the Festa dei Gigli in Nola and the Discesa dei Candelieri in Sassari.

At the top of the structure sits not an adult but a girl, the Animella, who represents the soul of the Virgin and is chosen by popular vote in the very same public garden that is home to the Children’s Village. Around her turn about thirty girls aged seven to eleven playing angels, while twelve boys play the apostles: when the festival returns, for weeks the whole town organises itself around its children.

Frequently asked questions

Verified on 9/4/2026 · curated by Francesco De Giorgio