Parco Nazionale
Parco Nazionale in Calabria
16 towns
Calabria holds 16 Parco Nazionale sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Cosenza, Reggio di Calabria, and Catanzaro provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Corigliano-Rossano, Saracena, and Cerchiara di Calabria. 13 more towns carry the mark alongside them.

Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza · 219 m
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018, home of the UNESCO-listed sixth-century Codex Purpureus and the 1731 Amarelli liquorice dynasty.

Saracena
Province: Cosenza · 606 m
A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.

Cerchiara di Calabria
Province: Cosenza · 650 m
A Città del Pane at 650 meters under Mount Sellaro, with a rock sanctuary at 1,015 meters and a sulphurous Cave of the Nymphs feeding the thermal springs.

Gerace
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 470 m
A 470-meter conglomerate rock above Locri, founded by Locri Epizefiri refugees, with Calabria's largest cathedral on Roman columns from Magna Graecia temples.

Alessandria del Carretto
Province: Cosenza · 1,043 m
The highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.

Bova
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 820 m
The capital of the Bovesìa — a 416-resident Aspromonte hilltop borgo at 820m that is the cultural centre of the Grecanic minority, where the Calabrian-Greek dialect (a direct descendant of Byzantine-era Greek) is still spoken by elders, with the triple Borghi più belli + Bandiera Arancione + Parco Nazionale dell'Aspromonte signal.

Laino Borgo
Province: Cosenza · 582 m
Southern Italy's only Sacro Monte, sixteen pilgrimage chapels begun in 1557, on the Lao river canyon that made it Calabria's rafting capital.

Morano Calabro
Province: Cosenza · 694 m
A conical hill of stone houses stacked under a Norman-Swabian castle at the southern gate of the Pollino, called Italy's nativity village.

Spezzano della Sila
Province: Cosenza · 800 m
A Sila plateau borgo at 800 meters, the gateway to the national park and the Giants of the Sila above Lake Cecita.

Taverna
Province: Catanzaro · 530 m
The birthplace of Mattia Preti at the foot of the Sila Piccola, where the church of San Domenico holds eleven of the Cavaliere Calabrese's paintings.

Aieta
Province: Cosenza · 524 m
An eagle's-nest village in the western Pollino, with one of the few sixteenth-century Renaissance palazzi standing in Calabria.

Mormanno
Province: Cosenza · 840 m
A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.

Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza · 10 m
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, between the Pollino National Park and the 33-hectare Isola di Dino just offshore.

San Giovanni in Fiore
Province: Cosenza · 1,049 m
The capital of the Sila Grande at 1,049 meters, grown from the abbey Gioacchino da Fiore founded in 1188, Italy's most populated commune above a thousand.

Scilla
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 91 m
Homer's sea-monster headland on the Costa Viola, the Castello Ruffo on the cliff above Chianalea and the swordfish boats working the Strait below.

Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza · 150 m
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its Aragonese castle on the highest coastal hill and the relics of San Valentino in the Capuchin convent for three centuries.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover

Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.

Pistoia
Province: Pistoia
Italy's nursery capital and the medieval Tuscan rival that gave its name to the pistol — a quietly extraordinary centro storico of zebra-striped Romanesque churches, Andrea della Robbia's polychrome frieze on the Ospedale del Ceppo, and Italy's Capital of Culture 2017, all 30 minutes from Florence by train.

Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.

Caldes
Province: Trento
A scattered Val di Sole commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.

Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria on the old Via Flaminia, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.
