An Afternoon In Reggio Calabria

After a wonderful morning in Matera, we arrived in Reggio Calabria. Reggio Calabria is an urban center on the very toe of the boot of Italy. What brought us was the museum here. There is information on Italian Wikipedia, which might be useful if only for the few pictures it provides, as we did not take any pictures in this museum.

This museum populated by glass cases filled with artifacts of the Greek era. Upstairs are cases displaying ancient coins, but the real draw is downstairs. Here, Amidst the old wine shipping bottles known as amphora are ancient Greek bronze sculptures. There are two heads, those of a philosopher, and a head from Basel (Italian Basilea). In a separate room lie the real treasures: two nearly complete bronze statues, known as the Riace Bronzes. Discovered by a scuba diver, little is known of the bronzes, either who they represent, or how they came to be in the sea, but they are famous because original bronzes sculptures from Greece, particularly complete or nearly complete are a rare find, especially as compared to their much more common marble reproductions.

Thoroughly satisfied with our visit, we headed back to our car. Along the way we passed a gelateria, and stopped in to the crowded shop to get a couple of cones. I struggled between an Amaretto flavor and a coffee flavor. After settling on the mocha, the man at the counter was kind enough to satisfy my curiosity by giving me a small plastic spoon with a scoop of the amaretto to boot, unasked. Italian hospitality. We sat on the edge of a retainer wall that circled the landscaping in a roundabout nearby and enjoyed our gelatto and the evening sunshine.

After our "meal" we headed to the port to board our ferry just across the way to Messina, on the island of Sicily.