Territory

Rossano was presumably founded by Enotri, a population of pre-Roman, settled in Italy more than three thousand years ago; later, the village experienced the Roman, Byzantine, Norman and Spanish dominations, but they always maintained their own cultural independence.

Calabria is universally recognized as the heart of Magna Graecia, for the very important phase of Greek colonization of Southern Italy that began in the eighth century BC. At that time, Greek cities were looking for new lands to occupy, first to escape the many internal political frictions and to improve their economic activities based on agricultural production and trade. Southern Italy and Calabria, in particular, turned out to be ideal for these purposes thanks to the mild climate, the abundance of water and the peninsular conformation of the territory ideal to travel by the sea.

Greeks were certainly not the first to colonize Calabria, but their colonies were completely different from the previous ones: Greeks did not create anonymous warehouses of goods, leaving some soldiers on guard, but they settled in new lands, giving life to urban centers, according to their customs. Greek colonies experienced such rapid development that they not only equaled, but even did better than Greek culture and wealth, earning the nickname of “Magna Graecia”.