Cittanova: the Villa Comunale, the grid-plan town and the road to the Zomaro

Cittanova sits at four hundred metres, on the step that separates the citrus plain from the woods of the Aspromonte. The town has a regular plan, with streets crossing at right angles: it is the layout of the reconstruction that followed the 1783 earthquake, which levelled the earlier settlement.

The main reason to stop is the Villa Comunale «Carlo Ruggiero», two and a half hectares of historic garden in the middle of town, with cedars, redwoods, ginkgos and a white pine thirty-five metres tall. The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, the natural history museum, is a short walk away, and half an hour uphill the Zomaro plateau begins, inside Aspromonte National Park.

The sea of the Piana di Gioia Tauro is twenty kilometres away: close enough to sleep in the cool air and be on the beach in twenty minutes.

The Villa Comunale «Carlo Ruggiero»

The Villa Comunale covers just over two and a half hectares in the middle of town. It dates from 1880, when mayor Carlo Ruggiero had it built at his own expense and gave it to the municipality. The design is by the Swiss engineer and agronomist Heinrich Fehr, who worked on ground already used as a garden by the Grimaldi family: four sectors of lawn and trees, cut by two avenues that cross in an X around a fountain.

The botanical side is the surprise. There are cedars of Lebanon and Atlas cedars, Californian redwoods, magnolias, Japanese maples, a tulip tree and a Cycas revoluta. The ginkgo biloba and above all the eastern white pine are what visitors come to see: the pine is over thirty-five metres tall, with a girth of three metres eighty. Since 1994 the garden has been protected as a site of particular historical and natural interest.

In early June the paths host Cittanova Floreale, a specialist plant fair that brings growers and collectors of rare species to the garden.

The grid-plan centre and the natural history museum

Cittanova was founded in 1618 as Nuovo Casale by Girolamo Grimaldi, prince of Gerace. On 5 February 1783 the earthquake remembered in Calabria as the Flagello flattened the town and killed nearly half its people. The rebuilding, on the same site, followed an orthogonal grid: regular blocks, wide streets crossing at right angles, open squares. You can still read that plan walking along the corso, between nineteenth-century palazzi and the mother church of San Girolamo. The present name dates from 1852, when Casalnuovo became Cittanuova.

On via Nazionale, in the building of the former district prison, the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale reopened on 15 March 2014. It holds around two thousand specimens in six sections, from mineralogy to mycology. The ornithological collection is the largest, with over a thousand early twentieth-century birds and about a hundred raptors; the herbarium documents the flora of the Aspromonte, including the fern Woodwardia radicans.

The Zomaro, Cittanova’s mountain

The municipal territory climbs from seventy-seven metres on the plain to almost a thousand on the ridge, and you make that jump in half an hour by car. The Zomaro is the plateau at the top, around nine hundred and twenty metres, inside Aspromonte National Park: upland meadows, springs and a scattered village that people from Cittanova have always used in summer.

The woodland changes with altitude. You pass chestnut groves and pine woods, then the beech forests that cover the plateau and stay cool even in July; in the damp gullies the Woodwardia radicans survives, a giant fern of Tertiary origin. The paths are wide and largely flat, manageable with children, and lead to inner clearings and springs.

It snows up here in winter, and on clear days the edge of the plateau looks out over the whole plain to the sea. Starting from Cittanova, this is the most direct way to understand what the Aspromonte is like from the inside.

Oil, citrus and the cooking of the plain

Cittanova lies in the foothill belt of the Piana di Gioia Tauro, the zone of centuries-old olive groves: very tall trees, tended for generations, which reach sizes rare elsewhere. Extra virgin olive oil is the town’s signature product and falls under the Olio di Calabria PGI; harvesting starts in autumn and the mills run until December.

Lower down, towards the sea, citrus takes over: oranges, mandarins and clementines fill the flat part of the plain and reach the market stalls from November onwards.

At table the cooking is closer to the mountains than to the coast. Aspromonte mushrooms and chestnuts, pork and cured meats, home-made pasta with slow-cooked sauces, goat and sheep cheeses from the Zomaro pastures. The pastry shops on the corso sell Calabrian sweets with honey and almonds, and the town has a handful of trattorias and pizzerias along the main street and the side roads.

San Rocco, the giants and the cavalluccio

The most keenly felt festival is San Rocco, on the third Sunday of September, spread over several days of religious rites and public events. It opens with the luminario, the great bonfire lit in front of the church of San Rocco to mark the start of the novena: the whole town gathers around the fire.

Then come the giants. Mata and Grifone are two papier-mâché figures several metres tall, carried on the shoulders and made to dance to the beat of drums. Grifone is the Saracen, Mata the woman who stands for the local people: their dance is an allegory of the centuries of raids on the Calabrian coast. With them goes the cavalluccio, a light horse-shaped frame that its bearer spins through the crowd, in a dance of Spanish origin that reached here in the seventeenth century.

The procession with the saint’s statue crosses the streets of the centre, accompanied by the band and the confraternities, and in the same weeks the programme widens to concerts and evenings of folk music in piazza San Rocco.

Getting to Cittanova

By car you leave the A2 del Mediterraneo at the Gioia Tauro exit and take the provincial road 1, the former state road 111 linking the coast to Locri: twenty kilometres and a little over twenty minutes of steady climbing to the town’s four hundred metres. Coming from the Ionian side, take the Jonio-Tirreno road, exit at Polistena and cover the last eight kilometres on the provincial road.

By train the useful station is Rosarno on the Tyrrhenian line, about twenty kilometres away; regional trains also stop at Gioia Tauro. From both you continue by bus or hire car.

There are two airports: Lamezia Terme, the busier one, just over sixty kilometres away, and Reggio Calabria at about fifty. The sea at Gioia Tauro is twenty kilometres off, the Costa Viola beaches at Palmi about thirty.

What to see nearby

Cittanova sits in the middle of an area you can cross quickly. Towards the sea lies Gioia Tauro, with its port and the citrus plain; a few kilometres away is Taurianova, and further west Seminara, known for its ceramics and its position on the first slopes facing the coast.

Climbing the ridge you reach the villages of the western Aspromonte: Delianuova, below Montalto, and Oppido Mamertina, where you can visit the site of the old town destroyed in 1783. Within an hour you are on the Costa Viola, with Palmi looking out over the Strait and the beaches between Bagnara and Scilla.

With more time, plan a day in Reggio Calabria for the Riace Bronzes, or head north to Tropea and the Costa degli Dei: a little over two hours’ drive from Cittanova.

Where to stay: holiday homes in Cittanova and the plain

Cittanova works well as a quiet base: it stands halfway between the sea of the plain and the woods of the Aspromonte, and at four hundred metres the summer nights are cooler than on the coast. The beach is twenty minutes away, the Zomaro plateau half an hour.

Our holiday homes in the area are for people who prefer their own space to a hotel room: a proper kitchen, linen, an outdoor spot for breakfast and no fixed times when you come back in the evening. There are one-bedroom flats for two and larger apartments for families or groups, with the option of putting the children in a separate room.

If you are planning a few days between the plain, the Aspromonte and the Costa Viola, check availability and send us a direct request: we answer ourselves, with some advice on what to see and how to get around.

Frequently asked questions about Cittanova

How far is Cittanova from the sea?
The sea at Gioia Tauro is twenty kilometres away, about twenty minutes along provincial road 1. The Costa Viola beaches at Palmi are around thirty kilometres.

When is the San Rocco festival in Cittanova?
On the third Sunday of September. It opens with the luminario bonfire and the novena, and during the feast days the giants Mata and Grifone come out together with the cavalluccio.

Can you visit the Villa Comunale with children?
Yes. It is a public park in the middle of town, flat and easy with a pushchair, with benches, lawns and avenues shaded by tall trees.

What is on show at the natural history museum?
About two thousand specimens in six sections, from minerals to fungi. The richest part is the bird collection, with over a thousand specimens and around a hundred raptors.

How do you get to the Zomaro from Cittanova?
You climb the mountain road out of town and in twenty minutes or so you are on the plateau, around nine hundred and twenty metres, inside Aspromonte National Park.

Which motorway exit serves Cittanova?
The Gioia Tauro exit on the A2 del Mediterraneo, then provincial road 1 towards Taurianova and Cittanova.

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