Main architectonic structures in the Grecanic Area. A tourist-cultural route

The term "Grecanic Area" indicates a circumscribed land of the extreme South of Calabria, where until the last century the inhabitants still spoke a language of clear ancient Greek origin. The area includes about ten municipalities and is located on the southern front of the Aspromonte mountain. It hosts old villages having roots in the period of the Greater Greece. These villages have undergone a profound transformation starting from the second half of the 20th century, determined by the new and easier relations with the coastal cities and by the strong growth of the regional economic system which has also led to a general social reorganization. They have been depopulated and the traditional language has been supplanted by Italian, to the point that it now survives only in the cultural heritage of a few elderly people. Nevertheless, the Grecanic Area keeps a strong historical-cultural identity and looks very attractive also in terms of environmental, settlement and landscape aspects. Overall, there is a wealth of resources that could generate a strong tourist interest, relying in particular on a set of relevant architectonic structures and on a widespread reception capacity. The paper proposes an original contribution to the promotion of a tourist-cultural path, focusing firstly on the local architectonic structures and even on some not expensive measures to improve the accessibility to the Grecanic Area by two mobility alternatives: the English Trail, which recalls the experience of E.Lear, a British writer/traveller of the 19th century, who reached the villages by crossing the mountains on foot, and a path through the sea-mountain penetration roads along the valleys and hills close to the characteristic rivers (“fiumare”) of the Aspromonte.