Riace Bronzes, bergamot, and the Strait of Messina
Reggio Calabria sits at the very toe of Italy's boot, separated from Sicily by just 3km of the Strait of Messina. The city is home to the Riace Bronzes — two life-size Greek warrior statues found on the seabed in 1972, considered the finest surviving examples of classical Greek bronze sculpture, and the reason alone to visit. Reggio is also the world capital of bergamot — the bitter orange whose rind produces the essential oil that gives Earl Grey tea and Chanel No. 5 their distinctive scent.
Reggio was founded as Rhegion by Greek colonists from Chalcis in 743 BC, making it one of Magna Graecia's oldest cities. It was sacked by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 387 BC and later by Hannibal and various others. The Romans valued it as a crossing point to Sicily. A catastrophic earthquake in 1908 destroyed virtually the entire city and killed 160,000 people across the strait; the current city is largely 20th-century reconstruction.