Calabria's clifftop paradise — crimson IGP onions, nduja, swordfish over embers, crystal Tyrrhenian water, and the church on its own sea rock
Tropea is a small clifftop town in Calabria, southern Italy, clinging to a sandstone promontory 50 metres above the Tyrrhenian Sea — one of the most dramatically sited towns on the Italian coast, with a vertical cliff face of medieval buildings above turquoise water of extraordinary clarity. The town is famous across Italy for two things: the Cipolla Rossa di Tropea IGP (the Tropea Red Onion, a Geographical Indication Protected product — a mild, sweet red onion grown in the sandy volcanic soils of the Calabrian coast and used raw in salads, cooked in preserves, or caramelised on pizza) and nd…
Tropea has been inhabited since pre-Roman times and claims a founding myth involving Hercules resting here on his return from his Twelfth Labour. The town was an important Byzantine naval base in the 6th–9th centuries, then Norman (the Norman cathedral, still standing, was rebuilt in the 11th century), then controlled by the Kingdom of Naples for centuries. The Church of Santa Maria dell'Isola — a white Romanesque monastery church built on a separate rocky sea stack offshore from the town cliffs, connected to the mainland by a natural rock bridge — has been a landmark of the Tyrrhenian coast…