The Caves of Zungri: the stone city carved into the sandstone of Calabria

A few kilometres from the crowds of Tropea, perched at around 490 metres above the sea, there is another world. The rock-cut settlement of the Sbariati is an entire village carved into the soft sandstone of the hillside, more than a hundred cave-houses arranged along the slope of the Malopera stream valley, in the Fossi district. Walking among these circular and quadrangular chambers, some on several levels, you feel as though you are entering a hive of stone where people once lived, prayed and stored grain in silos.

The origins

The origins remain wrapped in a certain uncertainty, and it is only right to tell them that way. Scholars tend to place the most visible phase of the village between the 12th and 14th centuries, when the site was inhabited and then abandoned. Some hypotheses trace the earliest settlements to Eastern communities and monks who came to Calabria in earlier centuries to escape the iconoclast persecutions, reusing large silos of Byzantine date. These are fascinating hypotheses, not certainties: part of the allure of the Sbariati lies precisely in this silence of history.

The very name, "Sbariati", evokes those who are lost or scattered, and it suits a place that seems to have strayed out of time. Here you will find no queues, no tour buses, no orderly lines. You will find the sound of the wind among the badlands, the warm colour of the rock at sunset and the tangible sense of touching the daily life of far-off centuries.

The museum

Next to the archaeological area, the Museum of Rock-Cut and Rural Civilisation keeps tools, objects and testimonies of the region's rural life, and helps you read how these communities inhabited and transformed the stone. The ticket is symbolic and covers both the museum and the settlement: a small gesture that directly supports the care of the site.

How to visit it

To visit Zungri is to choose a different Calabria, slow and authentic, far from the limelight of the coast. It is an invitation to slow down, to bring comfortable shoes for the paths, to respect a fragile place and to leave something to the community that guards it. A quiet alternative, made to the measure of curiosity.

Getting there

The Caves of Zungri lie in the hinterland of the Costa degli Dei, near Tropea. By car you leave the A2 Mediterranean motorway towards Vibo Valentia and follow the signs for Tropea and then Zungri; the village is about twenty kilometres from Tropea, Vibo Valentia and Capo Vaticano. The reference railway stations are Vibo Valentia-Pizzo and Lamezia Terme Centrale. The nearest airport is Lamezia Terme, handy for hiring a car afterwards.