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Scalea ( Calabrian: , lit. "stair" or "ladder") is a town and ''
comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...
'' in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
. The town takes its name from its terraced layout on a hillside at the bottom of the Capo Scalea promontory. The old city sits within a preserved set of ancient walls on the heights, while the beach at its base was developed into a modern shopping and leisure center known as the Scalea Marina. The interior of Scalea is an intricate maze of stairs, alleys, wide streets and plazas, support beams, and arches. One of the defining characteristics of the historic center is "suppuorti": wooden floors built above the alleyways, born out of the need for defensibility and for growth in dense limited space.


Etymology

''Scalea'' derives from ''scala,'' which means "ladder" or "stair" in Italian, but the term can also be used to refer to any exclusively commercial harbor. This initially may have been used in a derogatory sense, as commercial ''scalea'' ports were known as diaorganized collections of makeshift ladders and planks, in contrast to the professionally-constructed docks and quays of military ports.


History

Scalea is notable as one of the very first human settlements in southern Italy. Excavations of the caves beneath Torre Talao have unearthed
Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...
bones and stone tools from the
Paleolithic Era The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...
, and the surrounding Lao Valley also contains evidence of small
Protohistoric Protohistory is a period between prehistory and history during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted the existence of those pre-literate groups in their own writings. For example, in ...
, Bronze, and
Iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...
Age (approximately 10,000-7,000 B.C.E.) communities throughout. In approximately 600 B.C.E., Greek Sybarites founded the city of Laüs along the Lao River heights in order to facilitate communications with their colony in
Posidonia ''Posidonia'' is a genus of flowering plants. It contains nine species of marine plants ("seagrass"), found in the seas of the Mediterranean and around the south coast of Australia. The APG system (1998) and APG II system (2003) accept this ge ...
. Laüs is considered the antecedent of modern-day Scalea, as is the subsequent
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
colony of
Lavinium Lavinium was a port city of Latium, to the south of Rome, midway between the Tiber river at Ostia and Antium. The coastline then, as now, was a long strip of beach. Lavinium was on a hill at the southernmost edge of the ''Silva Laurentina'', a ...
. Ruins of imperial era Roman villas are scattered all throughout the surrounding plains and lowlands. The present city of Scalea arose sometime during the Lombard-Byzantine Conflict. Towards the end of the 7th century, Scalea was occupied by the Lombards and it remained their colony up until Charlemagne's conquest of Italy in the 800s. The Lombards built the city's fortress, its two gates, and many surrounding homes that linked together to function as a wall. The city's main military gate sat at the top guarded by Gastaldo Fortress, which was later converted by the
Normans The Normans ( Norman: ''Normaunds''; french: Normands; la, Nortmanni/Normanni) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and indigenous West Franks and Gallo-Romans. ...
into a castle, additional housing, and Piazza Cimalonga. It is during this time that the city came to be known as Scalea, perhaps due to the neighborhood surrounding the castle gradually developing outwards and vertically like rungs on a ladder. In the 8th century, Scalea was home to the Anacoreti, an order of Byzantine Greek monks who lived an ascetic lifestyle in the Scalicella caves beneath the city. They would later be joined by monks who fled north during the
Muslim conquest of Sicily The Muslim conquest of Sicily began in June 827 and lasted until 902, when the last major Byzantine stronghold on the island, Taormina, fell. Isolated fortresses remained in Byzantine hands until 965, but the island was henceforth under Musli ...
in the 10th century. During the Norman era, Scalea hosted significant mercantile and seafaring activity, and by the beginning of the 15th century, it had become one of the most important maritime centers on the
Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ...
. Following a rebellion against the
Angevin Empire The Angevin Empire (; french: Empire Plantagenêt) describes the possessions of the House of Plantagenet during the 12th and 13th centuries, when they ruled over an area covering roughly half of France, all of England, and parts of Ireland and W ...
in the 12th century, the port had been converted into state-owned land with significant tax relief that greatly facilitated commercial activity. The Scalean navy took advantage of this opportunity to become one of the most renowned in Calabria, with reach all throughout the major ports of the Mediterranean. During the Angevin-Aragonese Period, Scalea's population grew to over 5,000 inhabitants. However, this trend was eventually reversed by the
Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...
and the bubonic plague, and the city's population was cut in half as Scaleans fled the city en masse for smaller towns in the countryside. In the 17th century, Scaleans participated in a Calabria-wide revolt against
feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
. The 18th century was one of Scalea's most difficult, as a series of earthquakes caused significant damage to the city, and led to outbreaks of poverty, disease, and famine. A portion of the city seceded to form another town now known as Santa Domenica Talao, and by the 19th century, only a fraction of Scalea remained. This remaining fraction, San Nicola (today the independent town of San Nicola Arcella) was pivotal to Scalea's recovery. Neapolitan geographer Lorenzo Giustiniani observed that the port of San Nicola was a major trade and production center for the Kingdom of Naples, with Scalea benefitting from its positioning between San Nicola and the Lao River. Traders from all over Italy and even places as far as England converged on the port for abundant local goods such as wheat, figs, grapes, beans, onions, wine, and the fur and meat of rabbits, foxes, and wolves. Scalea was bombed by Allied forces during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. The homes comprising Scalea's historic center were gradually abandoned, with many former inhabitants moving to new developments constructed just south of Scalea throughout the 1960s. This sprawl continued until the 1990s, when Scalea undertook a renovation plan that included building a municipal airport, a swimming pool, and a modern port near Torre Talao. However, the airport is underutilized, the pool was destroyed by strong winds within a year of its construction, and the port was never completed. Such corruption led to Scalea coming under the scrutiny of the Plinius anti-mafia operation in 2013. 38 people including the mayor of Scalea, five city councillors, and several municipal employees were arrested and charged with maintaining political ties to the 'Ndrangheta crime family. Several more councillors resigned as a result, and the city was placed under a federally-appointed provisional government in order to continue to be able to function.''.


Economy

Historically, Scalea's primary industries were
agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...
and
fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...
, but those industries have nearly disappeared. Scalea's coastline was once used for
cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae *Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona * ...
cultivation, but real estate development in the 1970's led to the sale and demolition of these lands. Scalea's agricultural sector has had difficulty with the integration of modern
processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...
,
marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
, and distribution techniques. The municipality has struggled to expand the crop irrigation system despite its having available land and resources to do so. Today, Scalea can be socioeconomically characterized as a
subsidized A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy. Although commonly extended from the government, the ter ...
consumer economy, in which the net inflow of external financial resources exceeds the productivity of the city. This lack of investment growth opportunities largely contributes to Scalea's present inability to maintain financial stability. Since Scalea's consumption and construction are inconsistent with the city's actual economic output, Scalea's growth is a disorganized process that could be referred to as "modernization without development." Small businesses have developed in some sectors such as
construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...
, but the bulk of Scalea's modern economy revolves around
tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism mor ...
.


Main sights

*''Palazzo dei Principi'' (13th century) *''Palazzetto Normanno'' (12th century) *Church of ''San Nicola in Plateis'' (originally from the 8th century, later restored). *''Torre Talao'', a tower built in the 16th century, part of a system of 337 coastal towers built to deter the pirate attacks.


References


External links


Official website

Online community of Scalea

{{authority control Cities and towns in Calabria