Mount Contessa (m 881)

Two seas united a turn of the horizon

There are two peaks that almost in parallel mark the northern limit of the Calabrian Serre: Mount Covello (m 848), facing the Ionian Sea, and Mount Contessa (m 881), facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, separated by the valley of the Pesipe River, both high enough to have views of the two respective gulfs, of Squillace and Sant'Eufemia. The saddle separating the Serre from the Sila massif, opposite, is known as the Isthmus of Catanzaro. Isthmus, because it is the narrowest point on the peninsula, only 35 kilometers as the crow flies between the two coasts.

Aeolian islands in the light of sunset

To Mount Contessa (a Contissa for the locals, Calocrio for the ancients) one ascends from towns arranged in a semicircle on the Tyrrhenian slope: Jacurso, Maida and San Pietro a Maida. At first, olive groves mixed with patches of oaks, then beech and conifer reforestations to the summit from where the view stretches across the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Aeolian islands vague on the horizon.

Windmills, the windmills of the third millennium

The climb is accompanied by the windmills of the third millennium, wind turbines installed by the dozens were to take advantage of the west and mistral winds that alternate on the isthmus. More picturesque, the southern slope of the mountain, which gives way to a picturesque grassland basin dotted with rural hamlets, up to Fossa di Lupo Pass (m 878) in the presence of Serralta di San Vito (m 1023).