Stylus

Halfway up the coast, stretched out like an oblong and neat patch of houses, rises the urban profile of Stilo. We admire it in all its splendor from a breathtaking belvedere, a long terrace that skirts the road just before accessing the historic center: from here the ancient city appears as an amphitheater clinging to the spurs of the mountain, from whose irregular architectural texture emerge the great noble residences, the remains of the city walls, which encompassed its perimeter, and the most important places of worship. Arising from the destruction of ancient Kaulon at the hands of the Syracusans in 388 B.C., it was rebuilt several times under the evocative name Consilinum, from the Greek for “village of the moon,” then Italiot Kaulon and then Stilida. Becoming important during the Byzantine Empire, it obtained from the Normans the title of Regio Demanio, thus remaining free from feudal slavery and controlling a vast territory. In 1540 it was sold by Charles V to the Concublets assuming the title of county, although about a century later it regained thanks to King Philip IV its lost autonomy, which it maintained until the feudal eversion (1804). We walk through it at a leisurely pace, enjoying its beauty unfortunately obscured by improbable restorations and incipient abandonment that, like a dark evil, betrays and offends all the villages of the Calabrian hinterland. On the northeastern offshoot, next to the semicircular tower and the Stefanina gate, stand the church of San Domenico and the remains of the convent of the Preaching Fathers where one of Stilo’s most illustrious sons, the philosopher Tommaso Campanella, lived for a short time: the church, overlooking the valley, still retains its Baroque layout and beautiful dome dome, internally unfortunately compromised by a long state of neglect that has continued over the decades. The 18th-century Crucifix and the statue of the Virgin of the Rosary, dressed in preciously embroidered silk, are preserved there.
In the heart of the village, where the numerous aristocratic palaces, including that of the Bono, Lamberti and Capialbi families, overlook it, the bulk of the Mother Church dedicated to Santa Maria d’Ognissanti, a mighty single-nave architecture of 14th-century foundation rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1783, emerges compactly. The simple gabled facade is enriched by the elegant archiacute portal, carved in local stone, and the famous fragment of Roman sculpture, a base with two feet curiously walled in outside. Closed to worship for more than 30 years due to static problems, unfortunately aggravated by bureaucratic wrangling, the cathedral kept inside the prestigious high altarpiece depicting the Madonna d’Ognissanti, a masterpiece by the Neapolitan Battistello Caracciolo who executed it between 1618 and 1619, now in storage at the church of San Giovanni Nuovo. There are two elegant chapels: that of the Blessed Sacrament was decorated by the eighteenth-century stucco artist Onofrio Buscemi of Palermo and equipped with a precious marble altar of Messina manufacture, unfortunately the object during the years of its closure of repeated theft; the chapel of the Patron Saint George, on the other hand, has a sumptuous nineteenth-century stucco pediment of Serrese manufacture inside which was kept the wooden statue of the saint. The delightful façade of St. Francis of Assisi, with its mixtilinear elevation profiled in granite and dated 1743, is the work of skilled craftsmen from Serra San Bruno, rightly regarded as one of the most remarkable examples of the so-called “barocchetto di Calabria.” inside, decorated in stucco of measured elegance, the great wooden altar of Santa Maria del Borgo, a sumptuous composition of the Roglian school that encloses the 16th-century altarpiece of the Virgin, works from the destroyed Capuchin convent, deserves special attention. Also not to be overlooked are the marble statue of the Immaculate Conception, by the 16th-century artist Michelangelo Nacherino, and the 19th-century wooden statue of Our Lady of Grace, signed by Vincenzo Zaffino of Serra. The bell tower behind it was evidently an extra moenia defense tower, later incorporated by the 16th-century convent of the Minor Conventual fathers, of which only a part remains today.
Before embarking on the steep path leading to the Castle and the most famous Byzantine church in the Cattolica, we encounter the monumental complex of St. John Therystis, built in the 17th century and rebuilt in its present form after the damage suffered in the 1783 earthquake. The facade, redesigned by the Therystis in the 19th century, is flanked by two elegant bell towers: the interior is richly decorated with stucco work executed in the first decades of the 19th century by Serrese architect Domenico Barillari on commission from the Redemptorist Fathers, who took over ownership of the illustrious house founded in the first quarter of the 16th century by the Paolotti and then inhabited by the Italo-Greek Monks, improperly called “Basilians,” who imposed on it the name San Giovanni Nuovo or outside the walls. Barillari’s scores are sumptuous and elegant, made even more beautiful by the overabundance of light that, entering through the open windows in the great barrel vault, accelerates the perception of its grandeur. On the high altar in eighteenth-century marble, adorned by the overlying stucco pediment with the triumph of the Holy Trinity, is kept the nineteenth-century statue of the Immaculate Conception, to whom the people of Stilo are deeply devoted and here celebrate with great fanfare the novena and solemnity of December. In the left transept, enclosed in stucco architecture, one can admire the splendid altar-reliquary, finely inlaid in polychrome marbles, where the 16th-century bust of St. John the Reaper (Palermo, c. 995 – Stilo, Feb. 23, 1054), an Italo-Greek monk who lived in the Stilaro valley, whose relics were transported here from the Norman church of San Giovanni Vecchio in 1662, is housed. Do not leave this place before admiring the bulk of the Redemptorist monastery, the Serrese portal with its goose-breasted balcony above, dated 1759, as well as the inner cloister, in the center of which stands the canopied well with four pink marble columns.
Dulcis in fundo, the visit to Stilo culminates with its most representative monument, the Cattolica, a most precious gem of small dimensions, set on the Consolino’s dewlaps almost garrisoning the present historic center and the valleys below. It was plausibly built between the ninth and tenth centuries with waste materials: the brick bricks, which, as evinced by the finding of a stamp, would date back to the third century A.D. could, in fact, have come from a Roman villa in the Stilese territory. The four columns placed to support the structure are also reused: their use, in addition to embellishing the architecture, testifies to the desire to reuse the pagan world to refound places of Christian worship. The compact volume of the small temple is softened by five domes that surmount the four side spaces and the surface of the transept. The bright and cozy interiors were embellished with pictorial cycles of which only a few parts remain today, one of which – the most extensive – depicts a 14th-century Dormitio Virginis.
Dominating the town and the entire Stilaro valley is the Norman castle, whose mighty ruins date back to King Roger II, who ordered its construction between the late 11th and early 12th centuries. It is reached through a bristling and rather strenuous path to be taken with appropriate trekking equipment although the effort is amply repaid by the vastness and beauty of the panorama that can be enjoyed from there.