Albidona ( Albidonese: ) is a town and

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

in the

province of Cosenza The province of Cosenza () is a province in the Calabria region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Cosenza. It contains 150 ''comuni'' (: ''comune''), listed at list of ''comuni'' of the province of Cosenza. The province of Cosenza contains ...

in the

Calabria Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian S ...

region of southern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. It is located between the

Ionian Sea The Ionian Sea (, ; or , ; , ) is an elongated bay of the Mediterranean Sea. It is connected to the Adriatic Sea to the north, and is bounded by Southern Italy, including Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, ...

and the mountains of

Pollino National Park Pollino National Park (Italian language, Italian: ''Parco Nazionale del Pollino'') is an Italian national park in the southern Italian peninsula, peninsula, in the provinces of province of Cosenza, Cosenza, province of Matera, Matera and province ...

, at 11 km from the sea and 18 km from the mountains.

History

Ancient historians

Lycophron Lycophron ( ; ; born about 330–325 BC) was a Hellenistic Greek tragic poet, grammarian, and commentator on comedy, to whom the poem ''Alexandra'' is attributed (perhaps falsely). Life and miscellaneous works He was born at Chalcis in Euboea, a ...

and

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

report that Albidona was founded on the ruins of Leutarnia, an old and large city of

Greater Greece The Megali Idea () is a nationalist and irredentist concept that expresses the goal of reviving the Byzantine Empire, by establishing a Greek state, which would include the large Greek populations that were still under Ottoman rule after the ...

by the fortune-teller

Calchas Calchas (; , ''Kalkhas'') is an Argive mantis, or " seer," dated to the Age of Legend, which is an aspect of Greek mythology. Calchas appears in the opening scenes of the ''Iliad'', which is believed to have been based on a war conducted by t ...

, returning from the Trojan War. The oldest historical information about Albidona dates actually from around the year 1000.

Main sights

* Albidona's Tower: is an old tower built in the 16th century by Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo to defend the Ionian coastlines by the

Saracens file:Erhard Reuwich Sarazenen 1486.png, upright 1.5, Late 15th-century History of Germany, German woodcut depicting Saracens ''Saracen'' ( ) was a term used both in Greek language, Greek and Latin writings between the 5th and 15th centuries to ...

. It is placed on a marine hill and is called also ''Tower of Monks'' because the tower was owned to the monks in the 17th century. Today it is owned to a private family. * Mostarico: is a mountain high 743 m, that has a beautiful landscape towards the

Gulf of Taranto The Gulf of Taranto (; Tarantino: ; ) is a gulf of the Ionian Sea, in Southern Italy. The Gulf of Taranto is almost square, long and wide, making it the largest gulf in Italy, and it is delimited by the capes Santa Maria di Leuca (to the eas ...

and Plain of Sibari. * Church of San Michele Arcangelo * Church of Sant'Antonio di Padova * Church of San Rocco * Church of Madonna della Pietà * Church of Madonna del Cafaro * War memorial (''Monumento ai Caduti di tutte le guerre''): is the first memorial war erected in

. Built by the sculptor M. Pelletti, it was erected in 1966. In 2004 the memorial was restored and the original marble pedestal was replaced by a boulder, which supports a statue of "Milite Ignoto". Torre di Albidona

References

Cities and towns in Calabria {{Calabria-geo-stub