Itineraries– Itinerary II (first part)
by Gustavo Cannizzaro

The Low Area “Jusu”

Via Regina Margherita begins under the vault of the bell tower of the Matrice church and with it begins the second itinerary. Via Regina Margherita, an important road in Castelvetere, connected the Porta Sant’Antonio to the Pusterla, the entrance to the ancient centre until the demolition of the last century originated Via Vincenzo Niutta. Since it has become a one way road, car traffic uses the first section of Via Regina Margherita thereby restoring it to its old primary importance. The high part of the road declines towards a lower area where the 1800s church of San Michele stands. To the side of the church runs the homonymous short and narrow road, flanked by low stone houses which, in solidity and originality, contrast the apse of the Matrice church and the palace of Asciutti di Martone. The 1800s facade of this palace sports the same rose coloured wall-plaster and the small non protruding balconies of other gentile palaces, but it differs them in that its stucco decorations in relief are rather bizarre: sirens, minotaurs, soldiers exhibiting the picaresque pleasures of the noble dwellings of our province in the XVIII and XIX centuries. This facade finds its models in many eastern Sicilian palace facades. Returning to Via Regina Margherita, which descends quite steeply, one sees that it touches on Largo San Silvestro where we find the church of San Silvestro.

Church of San Michele

Asciutti palace

Church of San Silvestro and Santa Barbara

It is one of the roughly fifty churches belonging to XVI century Castelvetere; topographically, it occupies a privileged position in the Largo. It has a simple form, a rectangular hall and a semicircular apse. The facade is still an interesting feature with its big window above the entrance. The reconstruction date of the facade, 1896, is inscribed on a plaque, along with the names of the Saints it is dedicated to.  Again we find Via Vincenzo Niutta after the church, precisely in the tract known as “Lamia”; one of the most animate and characteristic areas of the town centre. The imposing facade of the Asciutti-Crea palace, rises along this tract, and the great doorway with entrance and granite staircase are still well preserved. The jewel of the building, however, is its balcony, unique in its kind in Caulonia, and which reveals its 1700s origins in its animated lines. Carrying on along the palace’s perimeter wall, which turns onto Via Ilariantonio Deblasio, it too a road in descent, we find Piazza Seggio, so called because it used to be the place where the nobility held their electoral station and therefor was the political centre of the town. Here election commissions are still held today. Piazza Seggio has a quadrangular shape in which seven roads meet.It is the only square in Caulonia that does not sit on an inclination. A recent restoration, supervised by the municipal administration, substituted the cement pavement with cobble stones and reinstated the old cast iron fountain in the centre of the square.

Via Cavour

Leaving Piazza Seggio behind and following the now much narrower Via Regina Margherita, leads to the lower and more antique area of Caulonia which still displays the original urban topography. This entire area is known as “Judeca”. This toponomy is a testimonial to the consistent presence of a Jewish community in Castelvetere which mingled with the local community. On the right hand side of the road rises the facade of what should have been one of the most important and interesting buildings of Caulonia, the ex Musco palace

Seggio palace

which echoes the Neapolitan architecture of the 1700s. Unfortunately all that remains intact are the external facade and the curved gables (in disrepair) which rise above the windows. Inside the building has lost its uniqueness thanks to its being broken down into apartments. Beyond this building, the road widens into today’s Piazza San Zaccaria, so called because of the church whose apse only is still standing with its fresco featuring a “Deesis”, in Byzantine iconography, in which Christ sits between the Madonna and San Giovanni who act as intercessors to the Divinity.

The Deesis of San Zaccaria

The fresco is one of the few testimonials of the artistic heritage which many centuries of oriental monasticism produced and accumulated in Calabria after the year 1000. The fresco is all that is left of the church of San zaccaria, built, according to tradition, on the will of a Jew called Simone, who converted to Christianity. The church was damaged by the earthquake of 1783 and almost entirely destroyed by the one in 1908. The state of the fresco, already deplored by Morisani in 1962, has only worsened in condition. Dated back to the first half of the 1200s, it depicts Christ in an Orthodox benedictory pose on a throne between the Madonna and San Giovanni (this particular iconography spread from Constantinople throughout most of the Mediterranean area). In the book held by Christ in his right hand, written in Greek, are the abbreviated words of part of the 12th verse from chapter VIII of the Vangelo of San Giovanni: “I am the light of the world, who follows me will not walk in the dark”. Next to each figure, still in Greek, are the symbols used to identify the depicted figures. Below Christ and the Madonna, there is a long sentence, again in medieval Greek lettering, which, although nearly illegible today, has been translated, by notable scholars, as: “Remember, o Lord, your servant and priest Nicola Pere, grace him with resurrection”. The quality of the style is quite good, highlighted by the setting of the figures and the firmness of the “ductus pittorico” and by the use of the chromatic spectrum, which still reveals a softness and a variety so beautiful as to suggest, according to Morisani, schooling in the studios of Costantinople. Carrying on, we find palazzo Musco again with its imposing doorway and its window with its gable at the centre of which is a delicate and showy decoration, and, on the corner, a refined acroterion. All this gives an idea of the richness and quality of the original decorations inside the palace which, today, show the signs of time’s erosion and man’s carelessness.
A few metres further on, the road becomes Piazza Garibaldi otherwise known as “Mortida”. The Mortida is enclosed, in the high part, by three buildings, architecturally harmoniously fused, making it one of the most suggestive squares in Caulonia. A beautiful fountain with a granite base used to rise in the centre of the square, today it rises in the lower part. The beauty of the doorway surmounted by a coat of arms and flanked by solid, neo classical, granite columns, the pilasters, the shelves and the elegant working of the wrought iron balcony must be observed.
Leaving the square, Via del Carmine or “Maietta” begins. Today, because of demolition work the road is spacious, but it used to be so crowded as to be an alley. The road is flanked by a wall which isolates it from the cliff which looks over the valley of the river Amusa. From this place it is possible to see the panoramic view of all the high area of the town culminating in the bell tower of the Matrice church and the facade of the church of SS. Rosario along with the ruins od the Dominican convent. Ahead, on the left is the facade of the old theatre, the ex-church of San Leo.

ex Musco palace

ex Campisi palace