Pentedattilo: The Ghost Borgo Clinging to a Stone Hand Above the Strait of Messina

Pentedattilo is a ghost borgo perched on a rock formation that resembles an enormous hand — five fingers of sandstone rising above the Calabrian shore of the Strait of Messina. The name comes from the Greek penta daktylos, five fingers, and you only need to look up to understand why.

The village was abandoned in the 1960s, when a landslide and the cumulative damage from the 1908 earthquake — which had already caused enormous destruction — made life impossible. The inhabitants moved down to the coastal settlement below, and the borgo stood empty for decades: roofless houses, churches with frescoes exposed to the weather, lanes overtaken by vegetation.

In recent years something has shifted. Cultural associations and volunteers have begun restoring certain structures, organising events, opening artisan workshops. It is not a tourist revival in any conventional sense — there are no hotels, no restaurants — but a human presence that keeps the place alive without distorting it.

You reach Pentedattilo along the road that climbs from Melito di Porto Salvo. The final section is on foot, up a stone stairway that leads into the heart of the borgo. You walk between crumbling houses and houses being slowly restored, past cats sleeping in the sun and murals that tell the story of the place. The church of the Candelora preserves traces of its original frescoes; the five-fingered rock looms above the houses like a protection or a threat.

The panorama is extraordinary: on one side the Strait of Messina with Sicily and Etna beyond, on the other the Aspromonte mountains rising toward the interior. It is a landscape that explains why the Greeks chose this spot to build a settlement — and why nature eventually won.

The best time to visit Pentedattilo is spring or autumn. In summer the heat is fierce and the rock reflects the sun; in winter the borgo is often wrapped in mist, which makes it more spectral still. A couple of hours is enough to walk through it, but staying half a day lets the atmosphere settle in.

Pentedattilo is not a museum — it is a place in transition between abandonment and rebirth, suspended between a past and a future still uncertain. To visit it is to choose to be part of that future.

Practical guides for Messina

• Where to stay in Messina
• What to see in Messina in 2 days
• Where to eat in Messina
• How to get to Messina