Seminara: ceramics, the Gagini sculptures and the giants Mata and Grifone

Seminara sits at 287 metres above sea level in the hinterland of the Costa Viola, with Palmi on one side and Bagnara Calabra on the other. It is a small town of little more than two thousand people, with a history out of all proportion to its size: founded around 986 by refugees from Taureana, birthplace of Barlaam, the site of a European battle in 1495, flattened twice by earthquakes.

People come here today for three things: the Gagini sculptures in the churches, the ceramics with their apotropaic masks still made by hand, and the giants Mata and Grifone who dance through the streets in mid-August. The sea is a quarter of an hour away by car, which makes Seminara an easy stop for anyone spending a holiday on the coast.

The town, the Mezzatesta palace and the old olive groves

Seminara stands on a terrace looking over the Piana di Gioia Tauro on one side and the line of the sea on the other. The town you walk through today is not the medieval one: the earthquake of 5 February 1783 levelled it, and the eighteenth-century rebuilding gave it the regular grid you can still read, straight streets and low blocks, adjusted again after the 1908 quake.

Of its aristocratic past the Mezzatesta palace survives, a ruin but still legible: the heavy carved corbels holding up the corner balcony echo the Sicilian models the local builders had in mind. Around it the fabric is that of a working town, with workshop doors at street level.

Beyond the last houses the olive groves begin. The local cultivars, Ottobratica and Sinopolese, grow into very tall, dense trees, so the landscape looks more like a wood than an orchard.

The Gagini sculptures and the sanctuary of the Madonna dei Poveri

The church of San Marco Evangelista holds the Madonna degli Angeli carved by Antonello Gagini in the early 1500s, the finest work the Palermo sculptor left in Calabria. The Virgin holds the Child in the Byzantine Odigitria scheme, the one who shows the way, but the exchange between the two faces is entirely Renaissance; the base is carved with the Ecce Homo, the Magdalene, the Annunciation and the Dormitio Virginis. The same church has a large relief of the Nativity attributed to Giovan Battista Mazzolo.

A short walk away, the basilica sanctuary of the Madonna dei Poveri keeps a wooden statue of the Virgin with a dark face: it is the oldest wooden sculpture in Calabria and has drawn pilgrims for centuries. A church dedicated to this Madonna already existed in 1325; the building came down in the 1783 earthquake, and what you see today is the neo-Romanesque rebuilding that followed the 1908 quake, with two spired bell towers and a porch before the central doorway.

The ceramics and the apotropaic masks

Ceramics is the craft that made Seminara known beyond Calabria. In 1746 there were at least twenty-three workshops in the town, and for centuries the quarter of the pignatari, the potters, worked the local clay for everyday use: bummuli and quartare for carrying water, jars for oil, plates and jugs.

Alongside the useful ware, the production that is recognisable at a glance survived: the apotropaic masks. They are misshapen faces with gaping mouths and bulging eyes, modelled by hand and fired in wood kilns, hung above the front door to stop the evil eye; apotropaic comes from the Greek apotrépein, to ward off. The colours are few and strong, copper green, yellow, manganese brown.

The Museo delle Ceramiche di Calabria, in via Vescovado, gathers the historic pieces and explains the symbols that recur on them. In the workshops still active in the town you can watch pieces take shape on the wheel and come out of the kiln.

The giants Mata and Grifone and the mid-August feast

From 10 to 15 August the giants dance through the streets of Seminara. They are two papier-mâché figures about three metres tall, each carried on one man's shoulders and spun to the beat of a drum: Grifone is the black giant, a Saracen, and Mata the woman the story makes his captive. Two more figures come out with them, a horse and a camel.

The dance belongs to the feast of the Madonna dei Poveri, patron saint of Seminara. Religious and civil authorities proclaimed her so on 31 July 1768 and fixed her feast on 14 August, the eve of the Assumption: that is still the day it is celebrated, and the town fills with people from the surrounding villages.

The same pair of giants appears in Palmi, in Tropea and in other towns of Calabria and Sicily, the mark of a tradition that crossed the Strait.

Taureana, Barlaam and the battle of 1495

Seminara was born around 986, when the people of Taureana, the town on the coast, moved inland to escape raids from the sea. By the sixteenth century it was one of the most populous places in Calabria: in 1545 it counted some fifteen hundred hearths, that is households.

Two figures who count in the history of European culture came from here. Barlaam, born in 1290, a monk and theologian, taught Greek to Francesco Petrarca and was made bishop of Gerace in 1342; his pupil Leonzio Pilato translated Homer into Latin for Giovanni Boccaccio, and for both writers that was the only way to reach the Greek poet.

In June 1495, on the plain below the town, the Spanish under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and the Neapolitans under Ferrandino of Aragon were beaten by the French under Bérault Stuart d'Aubigny: the Great Captain's only defeat in the open field. Of the monastery of Saints Elia and Filarete, founded in 884 and long one of the centres of Italo-Greek monasticism, the Orthodox church remains, where the Byzantine rite is still celebrated.

How to get to Seminara

Seminara lies in the hinterland of the Costa Viola, poised between Palmi and Bagnara Calabra. By car you leave the A2 motorway at Palmi, the nearest exit, and climb up in about ten minutes; coming from the south you can exit at Bagnara Calabra. Palmi is about four kilometres away, Bagnara eight: the sea is a quarter of an hour off, which is why the town works well as a base.

By train the useful stations are Gioia Tauro, about ten kilometres away, and Palmi: both are on the Tyrrhenian line served by regional trains and some long-distance services. From the stations you carry on by car or by local bus.

There are two airports. Reggio Calabria is about thirty-five kilometres away, a little over half an hour on the motorway; Lamezia Terme, the region's main airport, is just over seventy kilometres.

What to see nearby

From Seminara you drop down to Palmi in a few minutes: the centre with the Casa della Cultura and its ethnographic museum, the Monte Sant'Elia viewpoint over the Strait and the Aeolian islands, the Tonnara and the Marinella beneath the cliff. On the other side is Bagnara Calabra, town of swordfish fishermen and of the bagnarote, with its long beach below the upper town.

This whole stretch is the Costa Viola, the piece of coast between Palmi and Villa San Giovanni where the mountain drops straight into the sea and several coves can only be reached on foot or by boat.

Inland the road climbs to Sant'Eufemia d'Aspromonte and from there into the woods of the Aspromonte National Park; to the north the Piana di Gioia Tauro opens up, with its citrus groves, olive groves and port.

Where to stay: holiday homes between Seminara and the Costa Viola

People who choose this area usually want two things at once: the quiet of the hinterland in the evening and the sea a few minutes away by car. Our holiday homes are on the Costa Viola, between Palmi and Bagnara, a quarter of an hour from Seminara: one-bedroom flats for two, larger apartments for families, with a fitted kitchen, washing machine and parking.

Having a house instead of a room changes the rhythm of the day. You have breakfast with what you bought at the market, come back from the beach when you feel like it, the children keep their own hours and dinner is on the terrace. Seminara stays within reach for a morning among the ceramic workshops and the churches, and the Aspromonte for a day out when the heat bites.

Check availability for your dates and send us a direct request: we answer ourselves, with no middlemen.

Frequently asked questions about Seminara

How far is Seminara from the sea?
The town sits at 287 metres above sea level and the Costa Viola coast is a quarter of an hour away by car: Palmi is about four kilometres off, Bagnara Calabra eight.

When do the giants Mata and Grifone dance in Seminara?
From 10 to 15 August, during the celebrations for the Madonna dei Poveri, patron saint of the town, whose feast day falls on 14 August.

Where can you see the apotropaic masks of Seminara?
In the town's ceramic workshops, where they are still made by hand, and at the Museo delle Ceramiche di Calabria in via Vescovado.

What can you see in half a day in Seminara?
The church of San Marco with Antonello Gagini's Madonna degli Angeli, the basilica sanctuary of the Madonna dei Poveri, the ruins of the Mezzatesta palace and a ceramic workshop.

Which is the nearest motorway exit to Seminara?
Palmi, on the A2. Coming from the south you can exit at Bagnara Calabra.

Who was Barlaam of Seminara?
A monk and theologian born here in 1290, who taught Greek to Francesco Petrarca and was appointed bishop of Gerace in 1342.