waters. There are flowery piazzas lined with umbrellas, crum-
bling three-story palazzi, and shops hung with braids of hot
peppers and red Tropea onions. The buildings are just deca-
dent enough to make me think this is one of the most romantic
towns in Italy.
When we ask directions, a petite woman steps out of her shop
to point. Then Ed asks about the strange shoebox-shaped holes
all over the facades of many buildings. “Surely not for pigeons,”
he says. She tells us her father was a grande muratore, a great
stonemason. The buchi, he explained to her, were left to support
scaffolding in the future, when the building needed repair. This
seems odd—like using a crutch because you might break your
leg. She says, too, that the buttercream-tinged-with-coral colors
are mandatory, lest anyone try to intrude with green or gray.
She’s proud of her enchanting town and many before have been
as well: archaeological remains prove that this dreamy perch
over the sea magnetized people as far back as memory goes.
The 12th-century duomo, a Norman and Romanesque structure
compact as a loaf of bread, shows Arab traces in the windows and
decorations. After, we stop in at Chiesa del Gesù. I’ve been in thou-
sands of Italian churches. There are almost always quirky details.
Here, flanking the altar with its fabulous twisted green columns,
is a curious painting of Santo Saverio kneeling beside the sea as
a crab offers him his long-missing crucifix in its claws. A crab!
Onward to lunch in a quiet piazza. We try the famous local
sausage ’nduja—silent n—which derives from “andouille,”
spreadable and rusty red from spicy peppers. Also on the anti-
pasti platter, soppressata laced with fennel and hot pepperoncini,
and capocollo, made from pork loin and cured for a hundred days.
I love the pecorino del Monte Poro, a semihard cheese aged for
a year. Oh, and pickled Tropea onions and ricotta affumicata,
smoked over chestnut wood and herbs. Tropea onions dominate
the menu. We order crisp frittelle, onion fritters, then Ed moves
on to the frittelle di neonata, newborn fish. (Minnows!) I’m on
firmer ground with big paccheri pasta with tomatoes and pesto.
In the afternoon lull, I notice the angle of the Benedictine
church Santa Maria dell’Isola against the sea, twisted streets
only two donkeys wide, small carved masks hung on palazzi to
scare off the evil eye, shadows of palms printed on the streets.
The strong sun of the south beats down a tranquil somnolence
over the whole town. “Sunscreen,” I say.
“Number 70.”
Tropea, an hour, a day, a lifetime.
WE RELUCTANTLY LEAVE the resort’s blue,
blue views and the spa’s seawater pools
of warm and cold, striking out from the
200 mi
200 kmRome
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RANDY OLSON (TREES); NG MAPSNets laid under olive trees at Olearia San Giorgio,
outside Reggio Calabria, are gathered up for the
harvest. The farm’s owners, the Fazari family, have
been making olive oil here since 1940.